


Paper Tigers

by tvsn



Category: 12th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Romance, Bureaucracy, Childhood Trauma, EU Commissions, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Horses, Money laundering, Online Dating, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Palace Intrigue, Pandemics, Religious Conflict, Single Parents, Slow Burn, Sport Washing, Tragic Comedy, infrastructure, shitposting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 85,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/pseuds/tvsn
Summary: Bored (and quite possibly boring) career bureaucrat Phillippe Capet gets in over his head when he tries to delay a minor infrastructure project for reasons of petty spite and a latent sense of Catholic guilt.
Relationships: (in latter chapters), Johanna of Sicily/Al Adil (except again not really), Philip II of France/ a good half of the rest of the cast (excpet not really), Philip II of France/Richard I of England
Comments: 24
Kudos: 3





	1. Cheese and Onion

Phillippe Capet processed certain expectations of life, expectations which experience was terribly slow to erode. Having put his son to bed – a process that entailed as it had for the past several months reading the same book to him twice, occasionally being interrupted with questions that suggested that Louis was growing tired of the narrative itself (‘ _But, but … what if this happened instead of that?_ ’), a recent addition to bedtime he would have been happier to indulge if speculation did not inevitably revert back to reputation (‘ _Again! Read it again!_ ’) before his little boy shut his eyes.

Sometimes Phillippe found himself wishing his son gave him more cause for strife than simply delaying him from other conversations that existed in circles, but the boy proved in every way the model child, the sort others gave in to imaging prior to becoming parents. He did not share the same problem as many of his friends who shared the fortune of being mothers and fathers and the tragic caveat of ‘single’ (re-)defining the description of role. Louis spent his mornings with Phillippe at the dinning room table, dutifully doing the worksheets his teachers sent whilst Phillippe meticulously reviewed the day’s paperwork and complied spreadsheets of the appropriate proceedings. After lunch, his little boy was able to occupy himself with his blocks or books or stuffed animals – he never complained that he was bored, questioned why he could not go to school or to the park or outside in the whole greater sense of it, the only thing he did that occasionally proved a distraction from the new normal created by quarantine was to play with the office grade water cooler that Phillippe had bought on Amazon when he came to suspect that home office would long be the mandate of the European Commission for Construction, Building and Infrastructure, for which he dually represented the interests of the Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness (attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs) and the Minister Delegate for Transport (attached to the Minister for the Ecological Transition.) Occasionally, he would join his son at the corner water cooler, spend two minutes talking to him about subjects for which the seven year old boy had no basis of understanding (politics, sport) and ministerial specific protocol (for which effectively no one had a basis of understanding) before going back to his cluttered table and ringing up a series of corporate lawyers to inform them that they had failed to produce a form that had not yet been mandated when the application had first been filed, but which was fully necessary now for the submission to be considered and came with a[nother] negligible €80 administrative surcharge, a process he would find or create grounds to repeat eight weeks after the fact.

Phillippe Capet was highly competent in this regard and highly praised by his employers for his unique capacity for increasing government revenue without adding anything to the expectation of accomplishment. Since public works were tied up in the complexities of bureaucracy, officials could continue to debate the budget without the fear of being answerable to their constituents by passing legislation that went past the thin parameters of value-signalling. He enjoyed his line of work, but what he had lately come to enjoy the most about it was that could preformed all of his said duties reasonably from the comfort of his Parisian flat whilst raising his son and ensuring that neither of them fell victim to the global pandemic.

Valetudinary, neurotic and naturally prone to exercising precaution where heath was concerned, Phillippe had not left his home in months, ordering food and drink through internet subscription, hording basic household items in his utilities closet and disinfecting all surfaces after opening the window for the half-hour a day public health processionals recommended. He had a stationary bike he used for fitness and a laptop, which, when he was not using for work took care of all of his needs for social engagement –

But this was where his prospects were beginning to corrode beneath the stress of the new sense of normal.

It was not that Phillippe particularly missed the physical aspect of interaction (quite the contrary, as his mates sometimes joked he was in fact finally able to ‘live his truth’ in this regard), but he found it particularly challenging to keep any of his friends to task under the detriment of distance.

Part of this, he supposed was his fault.

On his weekly conference calls, he longed to experience all of that which now failed his routine. He had taken the liberty of signing everyone up for the same internet based wine club so they could enjoy regular tastings - not that anyone he knew well enough to spend lavishly processed the pallet necessary for application, disappointing as it was. To make matter worse in this regard, his unfortunately anglicised circle had such a proclivity towards cheddar that they never took him up on the cheeses he recommended they try along with the week’s wine assortment – and more often than not to the dismay of his stomach and Parisian snobbery, they took to munching on “Cheese and Onion” flavoured crisps – a snack suitable to but a single pastime, one that the seemed to be collectively working against by way of the subtitle hostilities they individually harboured.

At thirty, Phillippe was beginning to suspect that he should not still be playing Dungeons and Dragons with three of the same people who had shared his table since puberty, and perhaps, he considered as he poured himself a glass of chardonnay to be enjoyed with what was left of the baguette from breakfast and the cut fruits and cheeses he had read would pair well on the back of the bottle, his friends had long since come to the same conclusion.

He logged into their Zoom meeting to find that much unlike himself, his mates could not even be bothered with the pretence of multitasking. Phillippe sighed, foreseeing another night spent in the company of collective bickering, in conversation more cutting than witty, evading intrusive questions only to lie awake afterwards with the answers he was hesitant to concede, even to himself.

Perhaps they had a point. Perhaps he was somehow maladjusted. But perhaps misery simply longer for company for its own sake.

No one else in the quarter screen looked as though they had given the campaign any thought despite having at least read the emails he had sent after their last session. Johanna was up her neck in bubbles, hair wet and hanging with a hint of seduction over one of her shoulders – a state so natural, it seemed, that she need not be conscious or intentional in her allure. Phillippe blinked though the suggestion of his former classmate’s almost accessible physical perfection came as nothing new, and he knew better than to assume that she would offer anything that evening expect for a few vague statement about a job that, not unlike his own, relied on the reality of no one else having quite the familiarity with procedure that Johanna undoubtable processed. The difference was that the particulars of her workday were defined by da dangerous glamour that construction and infrastructure (in compliance with European norms and French departmental regulations) could not claim. She had married one of her professors before finishing university, an old eccentric who had had the decency of leaving her a widow at twenty two and the lack of forethought not to return the full of her dowry in his last will and testament. Johanna had taken her late husband’s family to court over the injustice and had come out of the settlement with a villa in Sicily and managerial ownership of a then-Serie A side she had promptly sold on to a former German Defence Mister who had made a fortune selling decommissioned tanks to hostile powers – and act which through the peculiarities of collation government had been a rather wise career move though it had cost him his office, the man now sat in Brussels and likely would until the statute of limitations on his crimes against the Federal Republic had fully expired, his reputation saved by the same refugee crisis he had helped ensure and the fact that his Rosanero had beaten the hated Juventus Turin in the same season they were ironically relegated.

As to Johanna herself, she had benefited immensely from the whole business of reputation laundering in which she had first only engaged due to an absence of personal interest in the beautiful game on its own merits. She had since met with every number of middle eastern despots and oligarchs her dealings with the sale of a Sicilian club had brought her in contact with and now helped them to escape condemnation for human rights violations by securing the acquisition of underperforming club sides, allowing the world’s worst to apologise for various acts of war and genocide without active acknowledgement – for who alive cared for the deaths of Christian Kurds when oil money flowed in the form of Brazilian strikers? He sometimes suspected that Johanna did to some reasonable extent – but this, he often found after a glass or two of wine was wishful thinking more than anything else; sometimes, it happened that she was paid by both negotiating parties to make sure a deal could not go through, but that the process dragged out for long enough that everyone involved repeated the press benefit (as was presently the case with the proposed Ayyub takeover of Newcastle United – a deal she would doubtlessly soon complain was proving more difficult than it should to cancel and conclude during a global quarantine eliminating the possibility of Mike Ashley insulting the house’s sailfish sensibilities by drunkenly pissing into a fireplace in a public house.)

Phillippe generally could relate to such professional conundrums, but it was of little use to echo such sentiments in the form of paragraphs of legislation with which no one at their (now metaphoric) table would be familiar, with the possible exception of Johanna’s slightly younger brother John, who like Phillippe himself had studied law and diplomacy – at least, it had started out that way. John Plantagenet very nearly held degrees in a great number of majors in various fields – Law, IT, Communications, Economics, Audiology, Archaeology, Medieval and Ecclesiastical History – frankly Phillippe had lost count and suspect his friend had as well, provided that the full of his course load had not been an invention of fiction from the very start of his steadfast determination to spend his entire adult life as an undergrad.

John spoke frantically and incessantly on camera about an article he had read in The Guardian (annoyingly in a language Phillippe himself could scarcely follow for the specifics of what was being said) at once unbuilding the Lego Death Star on his own dinning room table, having evidently (and most predictably) decided shortly before it’s completion that he would rather have something else out of all of the small parts. He chocked on that which Phillippe had reason to assume was the chardonnay he had ordered their lot -which he had the indecency to take in a disposable plastic cup - when Constance voiced the concern that Phillippe had been too busy typing various phrases that came in repetition into Google Translate – namely that the model John was deciding to rework was too perfect a metaphor for his own shortcoming not to be intentional, a statement the youngest of the devil’s brood was quick to object to by going on the attack.

>> _You say such as though there were any part of your miserable existence that gave itself to satisfaction – please, tell me, at what point in pre-med did you decide that looking at limp dicks all day was going to be your thing?_ <<

>> _Fairly early on to be honest_ ,<< Constance retorted, >> _I was quick to master sexting and had more dick in my phone by the end of the first trimester than you’ve probably had up your ass in the entire past decade you’ve spent struggling to make up your mind on anything between where or not you want to have duck or prawn flavoured instant noodles at supper. But since we are talking cock, you can suck mine if you think …_ <<

At this, Phillippe turned down the volume slightly, fearful that the ensuing argument of exactly no significance would wake his young son, that he would be caught in the awkward position of explaining that genitalia lent itself the rhetoric in ways that did not necessary apply to physiology, psychology or preference and that all of it was offensive and rather mean even though both Constance and John laughed as they spoke. In truth, of the entirety of his table, he quite liked Constance the best in terms of company and conversation (through he supposed this was to say nothing, the competition was rather lacking) but he could not reason why a woman with young children of her own could be so carless with casual nomenclature, as though it would not meet with the notice or concern if her son or one of her daughters were to call a classmate a cunt (as she often did her former brother-in-law with the familiarity of a fist name) – though, Phillippe supposed with schools being subject to closure this was less of a concern than he was personally want to make out of it.

Constance sat in her office, either still in her scrubs or wearing an old pair she had converted into pyjamas, twirling he glass rather than drinking from it as she continued to exchange such pleasantries with her former relatives. A urologist by training and an anglophone by way of a union that had ended in personal tragedy for their whole lot, Constance had an odd manner of phrase which Phillippe suspected was commonplace in English but which led to some minor hilarity when she said the same in French given the wider scope of circumstance –

>> _Are you taking a piss out of me?_ << she asked, prompting the disconcertingly similarly named siblings to overlap in argument and Phillippe to snort back a chuckle. Suddenly, conversation ceased.

>> _Oh, I just saw him twitch_ ,<< Constance announced, her eyes widening with a manufactured sense of excitement. It was at this point that Phillippe realised that in the entirety of the six minutes he had thus far spent in the video chat, he had failed to offer his greetings – behaviour made remarkable under the strain of distance. In days that had passed into memory not quite distant enough to not continue to define pattern, he would have gotten away without remark by placing his bag down and giving a knock on the table that their regular haunt in lieu of greeting, gone to the bar to order a round, returning with drinks to unpacked dice and the sinking suspicion that without an ongoing game of Dungeons and Dragons holding them together, the only thing that might serve to connect him to his closest friends was a shared memory over which none of them were happy to speak -

He had befriended Johanna and John’s late brother Geoffrey first, Constance’s late husband, the late father of her three still-young children and the former Dungeon Master of the campaign they had been collectively waging for the past seventeen years. When he was not coming up with medieval fantasy plots for his friends and siblings to play through, Geoffrey had been big into competitive riding and had, before all of their eyes been crushed under the weight of his horse in a minor show jumping competition whose footage occasionally resurfaced on YouTube, despite the Plantagenet family’s continuing series of unsuccessful lawsuits to acquire the rights to it from the Fédération Équestre Internationale. Had Geoffrey survived his fall, or so Phillippe imagined, he likely would not still be spending his evenings playing at escapism with people he no longer had much at all in common with, but a few weeks after the funeral Constance had asked him if he would continue on with the campaign her husband had been running and he had not taken as much as a moment to consider before saying yes. Others had since left the game, but Phillippe had kept it going none the less, though lately such was proving a test of will an endurance.

They had all grown too accustom to death to possibly shield themselves from it, and that sense, Covid-19 had already killed what little was left, despite of every precaution he had dutifully done well to employ against the prospect of contagion.

>> _Here I was about to ring you up on your fucking landline and ask you to go check the WiFi, mate_ ,<< John continued in the same vain, though Phillippe doubted he would have actually bothered if it came to concern.

>> _So … not to interrupt whatever is going on here, but Phillippe I have to know, when you go on those internal monologues of yours, do you still stutter, the way your mind hears itself?_ << Johanna pried before sipping at her wine in a way that might have punctuated her banter if the taste and her lack thereof did not prove a foil, >> _God, this is awful. Why are we even doing this? Do any of you even enjoy wine or is this just an act of expectation no one trusts themselves enough to concede to? Can’t we be equally as haughty and condescending over a round of craft beer or something?_ <<

>> _Craft beer maybe, the shit I fear you would qualify as such certainly not_ ,<< Constance quipped.

>> _Stan, you could be a right bitch even with something as pedestrian as a pint of Newkie in hand, no one would deny you that … but, gotta say I’d take it to be honest - Phillippe’s brain’s scratched up mix tape I mean, not this wine - would pour this shit out here and now had it not set him back fifty quid pro bottle – but check it, I’ve had ‘Safety Dance’ playing non-stop in my head for running on three months now and I’m ‘bout ready to end it all to be honest._ << John whined.

>> _Still?_ << his sister asked at the same time Constance smirked, >> _Wish you would_.<<

>> _Second that,_ << Phillippe nodded. >> _And a belated hello to you all._ <<

>> _Sound is working, too, would you look at that._ << Johanna continued to tease, >> _So, darling, tell us, what then is on tonight’s agenda?_ <<

Phillippe put on his mask to create something of the illusion of having a piece of carboard separating player and note, “When we left off in March,” he reminded them, “your merry band of mercenaries had just slain the fearsome dragon only to discover in the sword’s final blow that the lifeless beast reverted to its familiar form, rather, a form more than familiar to you. The air seems to chill as you approach the corpse to discover the old woman who hired you to -”

>> _Does this mean that we are not getting paid now?_ << John began to protest. Thank God! Phillippe thought, they were actually going to get somewhere with this tonight. It was due time.

>> _It means we can just raid the lair for ourselves_ ,<< Johanna countered, >> _I’m not interested in the autopsy, what do I have to roll to make it rain?_ <<

At this, Constance - rather predictably it had to be said - started up with her same echoing issue of complaint and contempt, >> _No! We’ve been over this how many times now? I’m not playing D &D with you people over Zoom. We tried it once and that was enough. Phillippe, I’m sorry you need a mental escape from the drudgery of ensuring that there are so many goddamn forms to fill out that our government needn’t actually accomplish anything minor or significant to be said to ‘function’, but unless I actually see the dice roll directly before my eyes_-<<

Phillippe buried his brow in his palms, loosely wondering which patron saint he had affronted as to earn him such perpetual strife. “I thought we had this sorted,” he sighed, lowering his mask now that it no longer served the purpose of concealing the smirk he wore whilst receiving homage from his tabletop vassals. “John found that D20 app which I specifically asked you all to download last Wednesday.”

>> _Yeah … that is just it though_ ,<< Constance interrupted with a put-on pour. >> _John cheats. He_ always _cheats. He probably programmed the thing himself or has it hacked or_ -”

>> _I’ve done no such thing!_ <<

For his part, Phillippe doubted that John had gone through the effort, but even as far as he could suspend his disbelief to the extents of his friend’s faults of character, the point Constance made was moot. “Even if that were true,” he attempted with a diplomatic conjunctive construction, “where does your complaint rest exactly? It is a _quest_. You are playing as a _team_ -”

>> _There is no team sport where the is opportunity for individual awards and advancements_ ,<< Johanna injected with an authority she certainly did not have over the subject, despite the specifics of her accidental profession. This, Phillippe considered, was the very hight of ‘role playing’ from someone whom he otherwise frequently had to remind of the spells at her current disposal – wondering sometimes if Johanna remembered the name, much less the backstory of the fire mage she had created when she was fourteen and had him hanging on her every word. Part of him wanted to quiz her on this, part of him simply wanted to ask the character she now seemed set on playing at a more general question he suspected she would not be able to answer like ‘ _Remind us, who won the last World Cup?’- ‘How many players does each team field at a time?’_ – or, on the off-chance that she had done a head-count at least once before returning the full of her attention to whichever owner or interested despot sat beside her, to throw her off with a mean spirted trick - _‘How many points are awarded to a goal scored from outside the box?’_ or ‘ _Explain the offside rule, if you would_.’

But before Phillip could properly pass judgment on the extent to which he actively hated everyone he knew, Constance and John pressed on with the same argument in which they had been engaged since they had first met as children.

>> _Well, it is just the principle of the matter isn’t it? How can I mentally go off on a magical campaign with someone I can’t even envision playing a game without trying to game it?_ <<

>> _Ayo, Brittany Bitch, I really think you are missing the point of Dungeons and Dragons_.<<

>> _I’m the one who bloody introduced you -_ <<

Spare me, Phillippe thought.

>> _She is right, John,_ << Johanna said bluntly, >> _You cheat. At everything. And I mean, to the point that I can’t even really imagine that it is conscious or intentional, I think you start off with good aims but then you just grow bored into testing the extent to which you can tamper with the task at hand._ <<

>> _Seems fair_ ,<< John shrugged, evidently bored enough of these accusations to simply give in.

>> _Well it is not if you just keep getting on with it_ ,<< Constance pressed, clearly herself not yet finished with the self-appointed task of argument.

>> _What is he actually getting ‘on with’ though? He’s twenty-seven and still an undergrad_ -<< Johanna defended by way of demeaning.

>> _You have an oddly specific definition of ‘adult life’ for someone who gets paid to watch old YouTube videos with terrorists all day, and with tax monies at that! For shame, sweet sister, for shame_ ,<< John snorted.

“What is this?” Phillippe blinked.

>> _I’m enjoying so much that my dear brother think that is really what I do for a living that I’ll not say anything that may shatter that perception_.<<

>> _Yeah, fuck this_ ,<< John declared, >> _Imma grab a beer. Try to figure out in my absence how to roll a twenty-sider to Stan’s liking that she can’t say I’ve tampered with it and we’ll try to snap Phillippe out of his stupor once I’ve got a pint in me._ <<

>> _Oh, grab me one, too?_ << Johanna pleaded.

>> _Sure thing_.<<

“Wait, you are in the same residence?” Phillippe moved to clarify.

Constance shook her head in shock and disapproval. >> _I can’t believe you two_.<<

“That is brilliant. We can play with real dice, Johanna can confirm the rolls and we can continue -” Phillippe suggested, happier at the prospect of moving on with the evening’s plans than he could be bothered to care about the infection rate and his friends’ involvement therein at the moment.

>> _That feels a bit too much like commitment for my liking,_ << Johanna claimed, teasing as she continued, >> _Anyway, what has you so convinced that I’m trustworthy?_ <<

“You’ve never lied to me,” Phillippe answered.

>> _I have but we were both twenty and naked and you were too concentrated on preforming to take much notice_.<<

“You’re point proves mine, you realise,” Phillippe retorted, dogging the blow with, “and for the record, if I know my mind at all, it was only concentrated on the task of pretend you were another.”

>> _Oh - cheers to that_ ,<< John laughed as he entered the bathroom, handing his sister a Newcastle Brown Ale and laughing at her protest that he had not bothered with the bottle opener.

“No accounting for tastes,” Phillippe raised his glass. “So, is this on then? Are we finally doing this?”

>> _Doing what?_ << John tried to clarify into the display of his sister’s mobile, likewise ignoring her cries to hand it back.

>> _I think it is ADHD_ ,<< Constance commented.

>> _You have kids, you quite literally think everything is, but seriously, what are we talking about doing?_ <<

>> _Phillippe thinks that if I read out what you roll, you won’t be able to manipulate the act of play to your own advantage, << _Johanna explained _ >> but I think you are being underestimated, that I, or at least my investment in the success of this venture is being overestimated, and frankly I find the whole of it rather offensive. Can none of us claim to know one another any longer? Honestly, Phillippe, can you not see that we are _all _at the same residence? That John and Constance are literally sitting across from one another at the same goddamn table, that she took the chair from her desk to create the semblance of social distance?_ <<

>> _Johanna. We agreed -_ << Constance began.

>> _No, you both agreed to this charade and bribed me into hiding out in the tub with a bath bomb to create something of a distraction, but the water is cold, this all feels rather silly, and I want to get out – and more importantly, Phillippe desperately_ needs _to. My dude, my guy << _she addressed him directly, _> > quarantine is over. The rest of us have long since returned to out respective offices and you and Louis are cooped up in that flat waiting for the end of days. We talked about inviting you over tonight for dinner, but Constance decided against it, worried that it would make you feel weird, but guess what – it is fucking weird. Richard even said you sent his lawyer an email attempting to recuse yourself from the deposition next week and I don’t get it – you live for that shit. So we are not going to play Dungeons and Dragons and we are most assuredly not going to play like everything is fine and dandy. No, here - John, Take it for a sec?<< _Johanna paused in her tirade. _ >>I really do want to get out of the tub._<<

>> _Uh … yeah. I’m sorry, man, I mean I share the sentiment but I_ -<< John began to stammer, holding the phone in one of the few angles unflattering to his features, making his strong chin look rather doubled as he creased his neck to view the screen.

Did his friends honestly think him such a fragile hypochondriac? Certainly not! Certainly, they all followed the news feed on social media if nothing else, however ignorant they might collectively be proving to is warnings. “This is ridiculous,” he instead. “Infection levels have peaked, they are higher than they were in April, I’m hardly the one being unreasonable here. I’m electing to not attend the disposition not out of fear for my health, but rather because I have a rather sordid history with one of the plaintiffs and I don’t imagine that I’ll be able to be a hundred precent objective with regard to the case,” Phillippe defended. “And I would have gladly joined you for dinner if the invitation had been extended,” he half-lied. He would have accepted, but later declined before any food could be prepared or any place was set for his person.

John squinted, not taking him on the fully of the premise, focusing, if anything, on the detail least significant to the scope of their personal relationship. >> _Can’t you say that about the CEO of every construction company in Europe though in accordance to due process? Anyway, you are simply there to present the facts, not to pass judgement – which frankly is more of a test of funds and endurance than a shining example of socialised market economy, but that is rather beside the point_.<<

Phillippe hated that John had studied law and seemed to have a functional grasp on its overlooked detail despite an absence of qualifications and several declared majors in between feigning this particular academic interest for his late father’s satisfaction. European regulation dictated that any municipality in want of maintaining its infrastructure, expand housing, or complete any number of smaller scare projects that likewise required concrete had to invite firms from the entire economic union to submit projected cost proposals, the half of which Phillippe and others of his status and paygrade could quickly discard on technicalities. The few that passed the test of bureaucratic inconvenience were passed on to the relevant legislative body to be approved by majority vote, but even when the fifty-plus-one rule had been met (a process that itself could delay a project by months) the firms to whom the contract was not awarded were given a three month window in which to sue, which was meant, in theory, to reduce corruption, when in practice it practically guaranteed it. The conglomerate with the economic capacity to hold out in court the longest won the contract in the end, and more often than not things worked out in favour of the Plantagenets if they were among the plaintiffs.

John had a point on all counts – Phillippe himself had no direct influence over any given ruling, and as such he could accept bribes without reprimand and knew everyone in the sector on an informal-pronoun basis, and he did quite enjoy this aspect of his employment. The system was corrupt to its core, and while he would be happy to consent this were the world not faced with a global pandemic that got at fears so great he did not quite trust them to his closest friends, he said instead of admitting to the charge before him, “I do know the other plaintiffs, of course I do, and personally at that, but the thing is – Richard is sole among their number with whom I’ve shared a kiss, which I rather think might muddy up the whole process. No, you are all better off if I recuse myself from this one – you, especially John, as I rather have to imagine he’s paying your tuition for, remind us, what exactly is your present major?”

>> _Okay, wait – I’m sorry, what?_ << Constance gaped. >> _I tend to tune you out when you talk about work same as I know you tune John and I out when we’ve given over to bants, and frankly I was a bit hung up on how Johanna didn’t open with whatever ‘watching old YouTube videos with terrorists on misappropriated revenue’ entails, but … I, I mean what the fuck? What the fuck and also how has this never come up? Ever?_ <<

In truth, it had never come up because Phillippe had completely oversold the narrative. “I mean,” he said, hoping to change the course of the conversation entirely, “I never mentioned it because it happened on the single worst day of my life, and I had rather repressed the whole thing -”

>> _Wait, this isn’t the Cheese Danish story is it?_ << Johanna asked, clothed and ready to re-join the conversation as she dried her long red-gold hair on a hand towel.

“No, no,” Phillippe said, happy for the deflection he had been granted by her general disinterest in detail. “This happened when I was fifteen, ‘Cheese Danish’ was this past January, my first and regrettably not last Tinder experience. I’d been chatting with the girl for a few days and we had arranged to meet,” he explained for Constance’s benefit, hoping this slightly less mortifying story would satisfy her evident bloodlust, “and I was really, really excited for it – New Year’s resolutions, right? Trying to put myself back out there. Anyway, I got to the restaurant, and saw from outside that my date was as breathtakingly beautiful as she seemed from behind a Sepia stained filter and I was like _‘Okay, this is it’_ – even checked my wallet to make sure I had a condom when I was hanging up my coat. But then I sat down. And then she spoke.”

>> _And she was an idiot?_ << Constance tried to surmise.

“Of course she was an idiot,” Phillippe blinked in his disbelief over the assertion, “she was a gorgeous nineteen year old foreign exchange student on a date with a bald, widowed career bureaucrat on the wrong side of thirty with a young son who then still regularly met up with childhood friends to play at dwarves and elves and shit -”

>> _I’m so … impressed at the level to which you self-actualise_ ,<< John inserted.

“I try,” Phillippe gave, “And believe me, I tried with all of my might and manners that evening, because this girl had the worst breath I had ever encountered. Honestly, I can’t really put it into context, there was something decaying in the back of her mouth, it was like walking into a port-a-potty at a summer festival every time she opened it – so I just, forgetting in my disgust that the woman was an idiot as we have already established, I did the thing that would send any sensible lass running, namely talking about myself at length, not really allowing her to get a word in, but somehow this did not throw her interests off and when the evening ended and I walked her in the direction of her Uber, she tried to kiss me before getting in and I literally screamed in horror right there on the pavement – like a high pitched shriek that stopped passers-by who read the situation as though I was giving her trouble. Anyway, this guy who easily had 20 kilos on me stopped and said something to that effect and I dashed off to the relative safety of my flat, emptied a spray-can of air freshener - like to the point where the air was so this with it that I had to order takeaway for the next three days – if I lit the stove the whole building would have been like to explode, but no regrets, my nostrils needed it after that … _date_. But here is the real kicker, a few days later I logged into Facebook, stuck on the metro and not wanting to risk eye contact with any of my fellow passengers, and she had sent me a request to change our relationship status and I never hit block so fast. But yeah. Ingeborg, from Denmark – hence the name Cheese Danish.”

>> _That just kept escalating_ ,<< Constance laughed.

“Yeah, my second Tinder experience was loads better, and that ended with the girl I met up with leaving midway through a G+T I’d spent twelve-quid on with some random guy at the bar, so do you really blame me for enjoying social distancing quite so much?”

>> _Well no,_ << Johanna answered, >> _but in context I’m rather curious how getting a peck from my gorgeous older brother possibly qualifies as a worse experience. Never thought you so much as bi-curious even when we were kids and you still had hair to flat iron and sisters at home whose eyeliner you could rather liberally employ, but everything in context, I never thought you a homophobe either, and personally I can’t claim much more for Mummy’s favourite that the affections of obligatory Christmas- and Birthday gift cards, but Richard has the basics of hygiene down and I know that is especially high on your list_.<<

>> _Oh I think I know_ ,<< John interjected. >> _If this was the worst day of Phillippe’s life it is quite likely qualifies the best day of mine – we are talking about my parent’s silver anniversary, aren’t we? Oh Christ – is that when this happened? Yeah you must have been fifteen at the time and that is exactly the kid of power move Pretty Ricky lives for. Dude, you can’t catch a break can you?_ <<

“How was this possibly the best day of your life?” Phillippe squinted.

John blinked, sounding genuinely apologetic as he again stammered, >> _I mean, I didn’t really think this was something you would want to actively have to remember of that I would need to expand upon_ -<<

“Well I am, now, thanks to you, actively remembering and reliving every detail of that evening thanks to you and your absurd claims which I ask you to defend,” Phillippe spat.

>> _It is just – I’ve thrown some pretty wild parties, but none of these ever ended with health care officials entering in hazmat suits. And not to get too caught up in my own psychology, but my parents did work together to make sure that you were okay and seeing the two of them like that_ ,<< he swallowed, >> _… it was one of the only times I could really imagine at least having been born into a happy home. And … and now you are expanding upon my sense of bliss by telling us that my asshole brother is so terribly bad at advancing at to make the Cheese Danish comparatively digestible? <<_

Phillippe shook his head. “You know you almost had me for a moment.”

>> _This the time you exploded the toilet then?_ << Constance asked. >> _I still see pictures from that night in memes sometimes. I’m going to tag you in all of them if you don’t tell me what happened._ <<

“Can’t you all maybe return to the impromptu intervention rather than pressing this?” Phillippe winced; not entirely sure he would put it passed her.

>> _I think this is more effective to be honest_ ,<< Johanna answered. >> _You’re like ten blocks away, just come over, kick our asses like I know you so desperately want to_ ,<< she said, taking her phone back and disconnecting the call as she walked into the dinning room, joining her once-sister-in-law that the webcam. >> _Or I can ring Richard, get his take on events -_ <<

If she did, they would all know he had lied to downplay the truth of his present predicament. He could not have that and worried there was no way out, rather, that he had talked himself out of a legitimate excuse to stay in where he and his son were safe. “Please, don’t do that. It is not as big of a deal as I made it. You’ve made your point. Let’s just drop the issue.”

>> _You sure about that, I did find that picture_ ,<< Constance said.

“And posting it will ensure that I will never leave this house again,” Phillippe returned. “’Friends like these’ – I swear to God,” he shook his head. “Alright, you can have your fun, where should I begin?” Where could he, he rather wondered, without ever being obliged to bring it to its rather unclimactic end, confessing the extent of his actual shortcomings in turn?


	2. Psychology and Literature

“Asthma is not a character flaw any more than life is year ten literary analysis,” Phillippe Capet asserted in response to John Plantagenet’s interpretation of the situation with which he was being charged by circumstance. “I knew this was a mistake,” he sighed, burying his brow in his palms as he began to pace, wondering if it was not too late to cancel his meeting. “Is there anything in this world that elicits your empathy or is everything just a matter of passing judgement based on fictions you somehow find my accessible than fact?”

“You need to take a hit of this?” John asked, presenting Phillippe with the inhaler her had been handed (along with set instructions that had likely gone unheard.)

“My son is high risk and you mean to make light of it -” Phillippe began to fume. It was five to seven on a Tuesday morning, though there would be no measurement of time that would not equate to far too early for any of this. Phillippe needed a coffee. He needed a coffee and he needed his friend to not add to concerns he already harboured about leaving home during a pandemic, potentially exposing his son to pathogens upon his return. Phillippe hated wearing masks – he had not even been particularly fond of it at parties as an undergrad with concerns that did not extend the weekend and his would-be wife at his side in a costume that might otherwise be classified as lingerie with all of the promises such implied – but all the same, he had ordered two boxes of thirty disposable ones to protect their son for entirety of the fortnight following his return. He hoped he could expect the same of John until mid-afternoon and had begun his morning with no reason to suspect that such would prove grounds for dispute, but the runt of the Devil’s brood, it seemed, had risen with the same perchance for circular argument Phillippe was personally intending to carry him though the tired task of discussing legal phrasing with individuals who stood to loose a great deal of money if he felt like being particularly pedantic –

Which he very much did. Always. Only not here where it ought not be necessary.

“The term Munchausen Syndrome mean anything to you, P-diddy?” John interrupted.

“Please for the love of all that is holy don’t tell me you are working ‘towards’ a degree in psychology these days,” Phillippe answered, inhaling deeply for one of the last times in the foreseeable future where such would be an option for him.

If John heard the critique in the sound, it did not show. “As far as Oxford is concerned,” he answered casually, “I’m reading Economic Theory, but like, all the work Johanna expects me to put in to ensuring this sale doesn’t go through, I might well end up doing my thesis on the fallacy of soft diplomacy -”

“You’ll change your mind on that by lunch,” Phillippe dismissed.

“Maybe,” John conceded, “but look, real talk - I don’t need to have a degree in psychology or literature or anything else for that matter to deduce that the only truly sick thing up in here is that water cooler and the fact that Louis keeps standing around it, shuffling his feet like he doesn’t have anything interesting to say.”

“It … is part of my home office,” Phillippe blinked, looking at his son, surprised that he had begun to play with his new toy in the verb’s most uncommitted sense before he had even had his breakfast. This was in fact worrying, but he managed to resent John for pointing it out.

“And I take it you are preparing him for the real world? Phillippe, he is like six, he is way too young to have an intellectual – much less internalised – understanding of defeatism which you seem dead set on instilling with the way you isolate him -”

This was simply irrational. “He has _asthma_ ,” Phillippe stressed, “a lung disease that in the real world doesn’t signify the soul’s gasp for attention -”

“But that is the risk though that you’re subjecting him to, keeping him pent up in here with nought but your company.”

“As though I did not have enough reasons to be nervous about the day’s expected proceedings! This was a mistake,” He declared, opening his front door and retracting his invitation as it were, “I’m going to arrange to do this all from home. You can leave -”

John shook his head, his longish, red hair half curled from the condensation of the morning air which would ordinarily prove grounds for derision giving him an added aspect of physical power and the arrogance with which it is accompanied as he learned over the shorter Phillippe, handed him the jacked he had only just removed and closed the door back shut. Phillippe felt a shiver decent his spine as he felt his front door meet his shoulders. John took a step back and laughed.

“Christ are you one for drama. What do you have to be nervous about? My _brother?_ I told you, don’t let him get to you. Get up in there and drop the fucking mic after what I’m sure will amount to a dry recitation of obscure building code that no one understands enough to liberally interpret, paralegals frantically flipping between paragraphs in a fruitless attempt to follow. That shit will put Richard to sleep and he will wake hours later in an empty conference room in a cold sweat like the one you said you were in after he gave you your first boner -”

“I never said that,” Phillippe objected, continuing in a hiss, _“And please could you refrain from such vulgarities in the presence of my son.”_

“Yeah um … so Arthur is like the same age and Stan lets him play _Call of Duty_ with me on X Box Live. I’m sure Louis has already been exposed to worse, so staying with awkward boners, you said something about cold sweat and my mind filled in the rest.”

Phillippe shut his eyes, wondering if his son who only played educational games on pre-approved sites had in fact been exposed to a series of sexual expletives by his godbrother who had equally no business knowing words he could not possibly have a context for. Phillippe knew himself to be given to extremities in this regard, but was he altogether alone in believing that children should be shielded from the world’s ills, however so they may manifest? “There is something deeply wrong with you,” he surmised, not willing to cut his first opportunity in months to enjoy coffee that was not filter short to have a philosophical debate about parenting with a man who had no children of his own. Circular, meaningless debate was better left until after breakfast, and better in general when it came at the cost of German taxpayers who for reasons beyond fathom still believed in the promise of Europe.

“Kind of rich coming from a man who never got over some shit that went down at a house party when he was a teenager – oh God. Sorry, that pun actually wasn’t intentional, but you see what I mean. You are actually blushing! Aw!”

Was he really still on this?

“It is _rage_ , John. You think someone so keen to point out motivating factors would recognise the physical manifestations of base emotion.”

“No, no – I deduced the bit about your base desires, we are on the same page,” he paused, “at least … I think I am on the page you wanted me to be on when we were meant to be playing D&D last Wednesday. Constance just thought the whole thing was hilarious, and Johanna is too deviant to have viewed this episode as anything but a well-executed act of vengeance – and I mean, both kind of have a point. Or, at least, they would if you had not simultaneously been trying to sell us on the narrative of being too hung up on this episode to advance the plot. It is just like … stop blaming the realities of other people or using such as an excuse to not deal with whatever is really keeping you in lockdown mode, yeah?”

Phillippe should have taken the opportunity he had been afforded and taken his exit, and he knew as much, but John could not manage to be helpful without extending injury or opening old wounds, fully absent of his intentions. Tired, and angry at again being made to have this conversation, he wanted the last word. He regretted the ones he selected to this end as soon as he spoke them.

“Yeah, yeah – I guess I can see this from your perspective, what with your particular commitment to remaining eighteen outweighing any obtainable goal. Worried Mummy won’t call anymore after you have run out of ‘legitimate’ ways to spend her money, are you?” he asked with a mocking pout. It was no secret that Éléonore had no particular fondness for her youngest, but that said more about her than it ever would about John. Because of the mask he wore, Phillipe could not quite gauge his exact expression, and for that he was grateful. He did not want to know how deeply he had stabbed his friend in the back when all John had really been saying until that point regardless of his constructive manner was ‘you know I’ve got yours, right?’

“This is exactly what I mean. I don’t know why I bother with you, though.”

“I didn’t mean what I just said -” Phillippe tried to adjust.

“Yes, you did,” John negated him. “Of course you did - you just didn’t mean to say it.”

He was right, naturally, and with such phrasing perhaps he would have proven in the social sciences as he had been in literature and law. Maybe John should have been a writer. Maybe, though, they two simply went too far back, further than either of them existed as flesh and blood.

Phillippe swallowed, still struggling to acclimate himself to the idea that people listened when he spoke, still, perhaps, mentally hung up on a mishap he had suspected last week’s wider conversation would allow addressed in mere passing. At fifteen, he had been invited to a party he had felt rather awkward attending for a host of reasons, most of which had to deal directly with the hosts themselves. His (to the time) still recently deceased father had been involved with Éléonore Plantagenet (nee Poitiers) years before he had been born – involved, that was, to the point that his much older half-sisters called her “mum”. The marriage had been passionate, at least Phillippe had gleaned as much from the fact that his otherwise bumbling father never spoke to or about the woman, only to later have such more or less confirmed when his elder sister Alys told him that he might have otherwise been conceived in the Vatican when the two were on a belated honeymoon in Rome and Father had been fixated on the idea of having a son to carry on the family name.

As a young, impressionable and fully inexperienced teen, Phillippe at once could not imagine his elderly father engaging in carnal pleasures and, specifically in the awkward setting of Catechism given the nature of the narrative he had been relayed, found that he could not think of much other than the time his old man allegedly emptied himself into his wicked then-wife at the seat of the Holy See with designs on his own inception through this act of desecration. Sometimes, he would awake from the night’s slumber half-hard, and, having only this single description of what sex was like, terrified that his dreams had taken him to far darker places than the night might have otherwise allowed. He never offered any of this in Confession, and as such made a point of misusing the Lord’s name when he sat with his family in traffic on Sunday morning - not that he meant to curse his Lord and Saviour, of course, but coward that he had been, he could not partake in the Eucharist anyway and did not want to admit to his parents and sisters the real reason he could not take Communion, deciding instead to ostracise himself on what he considered lesser sins.

Alys, it had to be said, also factored into the reasons he had been loath to attend the party in question. In a bout of teenage angst (to which she still remained prone in her mid-thirties), she had begun a relationship with one of the son’s Éléonore had gone on to give Henry Plantagenet, the eighteen-year-old she had married eight weeks after finalising her divorce in her late twenties. When this admission failed to illicit their Father’s anger in the way Alys had expected, she had slept with Henry himself which had the effect of ending her affair with Richard, nearly ending Henry and Éléonore’s marriage, and allowing Father further ground to ignore the emotional state of his middle-child, delighted as he had otherwise been to see his rival splinter. It was at this point that Alys had told Phillippe about father’s first honeymoon, inventing in him a manufactured memory of walking in on an intimate moment, judgemental as all of the angles, saints and martyrs preserved in effigy, unable to shut their eyes -

Alys, unlike himself, continued to take Corpus Christi as though she had never engaged in such action or forced him and their younger sister Agnes into such thoughts. Phillippe had no idea what she spoke of with their priest, but he supposed it was nothing to do with this as she had not been sent into a convent – which was not a particularly realistic expectation in and of itself, but Phillippe could not factor how else his sister would have been able to fit enough Paternosters into her day-to-day to rid her soul of the stain from this particular attention grab.

In spite of (or perhaps due to) proximity, Phillippe had first met Éléonore after hearing and internalizing the only story in which she had featured for him, and this at the same spot he had first met Geoffrey, befriending him without making the familial connection as, short, dark and stalky, he failed to evoke anything of the Plantagenets whom Phillippe knew in passing. He had shaken the hand of his new-mate’s mum before learning her name or offering his; when she gave it, his horse neighed at the sound as though the apocalypse were at hand and he awaited Death, Famine, Plague or Pestilence to take his mount. Phillippe, for his part, came to associate the noise with the only narrative in which he could contextualise the woman who faced him, and henceforth whenever something unrelated evoked her sexuality in his teenage mind, he quite imagined the still beautiful middle-aged woman making horse-sounds whilst so engaged – be it up against a gilded Vatican wall or between his sheets where he feared she and his father found him whilst he slept.

Phillippe Capet never wanted to be in the same room as Éléonore Plantagenet, or her sister-seducing second husband, for that matter.

But he had been friends with Geoffrey who promised him the Silver Anniversary celebration would be fun if one were able to ignore the hypocrisy of it all. Perhaps more importantly though, Phillippe had by that point made friends with a few of Geoffrey’s siblings with whom he might have otherwise remained a stranger - Johanna who was in his class and John who was a year under them and they allegedly both wanted him to come, too.

This alone was almost better than expectation –

for Johanna had easily been the prettiest girl in his year.

A few months earlier she had decided at the start of term that he would make a better lab partner than the chatty girls whose coursework she casually copied in homeroom the day it was due, making light conversation as her eyes periodically fell on their papers and her left hand scribbled whatever answers she had no intention of working out herself. Trying to be helpful, trying, rather, lost for something clever to otherwise say, Phillippe had asked her if she want him to tutor her when she sat with him to deprive her other admirers of her presence out of some spite she had been harbouring at the time, the details of which had long been lost to memory. Johanna had met this with a shrug and answered that the thing about maths was that once one had committed to memorising a formula, the rest was easily worked out, something she would happily do on a test, but she would not spend a random Wednesday evening fretting over twenty-odd problems from her work-book when she could just as well watch _OC California_ and happily spoil the plot for her sisters in Germany and Spain where new episodes would not air for another few months.

Life seemed simple for someone like Johanna, though she herself seemed terribly complex – beautiful and perhaps too hesitant to confess to her own fragility, and thus in short order Phillippe found himself in the confused certainty of having his friend real crush.

He had planned to tell her about this development at the party.

It should be noted that he had also planned to be rejected outright, but he was certain that she would quickly put the conversation from her mind (as she did everything that was not purely topical) and that by Monday she would be back to interrupting him when he spoke at length about _Lord of the Rings_ to mention a particularly bloody event in the First World War said to give Tolkien inspiration (and this where other girls might have talked with the same wonder and excitement over Orlando Bloom.) But knowing how he felt, Johanna would come to see him as her own promised prince and by the summer she would tell him with practiced indifference with which she met most that the feeling was mutual and they she would love to continue doing the same things they already did under new labels and he would know what it was to realise ~~ambition~~. Affection. To realise affection. Of course that is what he had meant!

Whatever Phillippe hoped to accomplish as far as the evening itself went, however, he had woken up that morning with a queasy feeling in his stomach which he poetically dismissed at butterflies to his own perils.

As the evening progressed however, this became harder to do. Johanna had angered him early on by ignoring him in favour of the sisters she never otherwise saw (did she not realise what a blessing this was? Phillippe personally would have traded most anything he could conceptually bargain at fifteen to be rid of Marie and Alix and Margaret and Agnes and most especially Alys and he was half sure that Mathilda and Elle were no different. Could she not see that he was clearly preferable company to the women whose blood she shared?)

For his part, Geoffrey had snuck off into his bedroom with his girlfriend Constance, which left Phillippe with no option for easy company other than John, who was busy watching Robert the Flatulent perform his, um … set, which was probably more entertaining for a twelve year old who had just figured out how to write ‘BOOBS’ on a calculator and found anything to do with the human body correspondingly hilarious. Phillippe, for his part, had never been a fan of fart jokes as most of the men of the Plantagenet line were – but perhaps something had simply been lost in translation. He was even less keen on bodily humour, however, when he found himself dropping a few punchlines before the at-the-time-esteemed-satirist (whom in the fifteen years since had his reputation shattered by the Me-Too movement - leading Phillippe to even more unseemly mental images about others in the act than that which Alys had forced upon him) had had his chance. After a while, others in the audience began looking in his direction, the comedian said something at his expense, John asked in earnest (but unfortunately in English) if he was alright, and Phillippe, confused and humiliated, was forced to excuse himself to a water closet, offering what he supposed had been a weird sentence in his departure and fretting as he made his way to the toilet that on top of everything else, he had forgotten an irregular conjugation in the four months since he had dropped English in favour of Latin as an elective language credit.

He spent the next forty or so minutes clutching his knees, praying to the God he had spent the past two years cursing in morning traffic that he be excused from the Eucharist in his father’s eyes (having not being entirely forthcoming with the Holy Father’s earthly vessel at Confession Friday afternoon) that the same Éléonore who he suspected of haunting his occasional dreams with her horse-noises would turn the music up to the point that other guests would stop knocking on the door in response to the sounds his body was making in its flawed digestion, asking if he was alright, to which he could only respond “do eat not the appetisers” (by which, of course, he meant “do not eat” – not that it mattered as much as he made out, the English had to know how stupid their own language sounded by the virtue of having to speak it regularly, and there had been nothing wrong with the horsd’œuvre, he had been ill before he had come.)

Eventually, God in his somewhat cruel Mercy put Taylor Swift onto the party’s playlist, which prompted someone to turn the stereo up to a volume that Phillippe and his poorly timed diarrhoea went unheard. Half a roll of toilet paper and several flushes later, Phillippe felt ready to re-join the festivities as much as he might (which he supposed amounted to not much more than standing in a corner and looking critical an dejected – Johanna would tease that he was really becoming an “emo-kid” come Monday, but this would be better than having her or John know that he had been sick in their house – which he suspected they would find quite funny given the English influences on their humour.) He splashed some wated on his face, after washing his hands, felt his stomach rumble again and groaning, retook his seat on the porcelain throne just as the toilet tank began making similar cries.

Within seconds, Phillippe found himself covered in his own waste as well as that of half of everyone in the household, crouching in the impossible dilemma of pulling his now-wet shorts and trousers back up or being found with his pants down in a small room with shit-stained walls. He was found halfway when Henry opened the door and crying, Phillippe haplessly explained, “Je jure, ce n’était pas moi.” Henry nodded slowly, raised a finger, shut the door, and returned with a few towels and his beautiful wife.

Éléonore spirited Phillip to the upstairs master bathroom while her husband ushered out the guests to whom they were not giving quarter and rang for a plumber. After being stripped of his clothes and shoved into a shower by the first woman he had ever mentally tried to picture unclothed, she put his clothes into the machine (as though she suspected he would ever wear them again), laid out a bathrobe, warm socks and pyjamas from one of her son’s wardrobes, and returned when he had finished sobbing under a showerhead with a dose of Lomotil and a first-aid kit, checking his for cuts and bruises as she tried get him to make conversation about his ridding lessons, about school, about where he planned to attend university.

Phillippe for his part had been too exhausted and mortified to engage with any of this and kept apologising for the state of the downstairs water closet, to which Éléonore only responded had been clogged by a flushed rubber, which she more than believed he had not been responsible for, putting salt into a very fresh wound as he had come to her party with every intention of making a complete tit of himself before her youngest daughter. Now, he was certain that he would not have any opportunities to experience sex before sitting his baccalauréat (if ever) and he would either have to give up his seat in the front of the room where he could hide from the fact that he needed glasses or ask Johanna to give up hers, which would probably mean her returning to the back of the room and getting in trouble for disrupting lesson, which would not really be fair to anyone.

Not able to voice this, Phillippe nodded along with everything that was being said and followed his well-meaning hostess back downstairs, noting the public health officials in hazmat suits on his decent, having the questions they wanted to ask him thwarted by Henry with whom no one trusted themselves to argue when he said “not until the boy feels better.”

Phillippe did not know in whose bed he had been laid to rest, but when he woke up with no concept of exactly how much time had passed, he found himself face to face with Richard, who without the courtesy of introduction stroked his check softly and brought his lips to Phillippe’s forehead, prompting the boy to as “What is this?” as he questioned if _this_ was precisely what had been happening to him at least twice a week while he slept, if he was dreaming now, if it was more sinful than he had been given to suspect as it involved another man, if he would have to one day atone for the details of his absent mind’s deviance if he could not recall them when he awoke.

“You don’t have a fever, that is good,” Richard had answered. “You still need to drink this water though; I’m concerned about you becoming dehydrated.”

Phillippe, who had not been thirsty in the least, took a few sips to appease this haughtily intruder, and when satisfied, Richard had left, tossing at Phillippe’s then-long hair a bit before he did. He started losing it shortly thereafter, and fearing that this was God’s wrath, finally confessed to his elderly priest that he thought about sex all of the time, but not actually about having it, about his father doing so in the Vatican with a woman who went on to divorce him and have a ton of kids he was now friends with, who actually seemed like a pretty good mother which made the fact that he suspected he had woken up on more than a few occasions with a boner about her even more uncomfortable as he was not attracted to her in any way that could be described as sexual at all. He did once have designs at her youngest daughter, but these had largely disappeared with his every hope of actualizing them, but he had been kissed by one of her many sons, and thus worried that he had done something morally repugnant to warrant this act of affection and was being punished with male pattern balding at far younger than he should have to consider the biological possibility of this occurring.

The old man behind the lattice explained the particulars of puberty with the same awkward pauses of a PE teacher who had really only been hired to coach some blood-sport, told Phillippe he was a good lad and told him to say three Hail Marys and a Paternoster as though he had not heard any of what Phillippe had tried to relay, flabbergasted though he had been. Not certain that this was enough to wash his soul of sin, Phillippe added a full Rosary to his assigned praying, but it was to no avail.

His hair continued to fall out.

John continued to look at him and laugh every time he said “shit” for the next three years, regardless of conversational context.

Johanna remained his desk-partner until graduation.

And for his part the only kiss that he had received in the full of his adolescence was the one he was not entirely sure how he had encouraged.

In collage, he came to discover that everything the priest had told him had been factually correct, with the exception of all of that business about the existence of God, which he could forgive him, Europe was transitioning into a free market economy and he supposed that every peddler had to make their bottom line somehow. In such time, he also met the love of his life and made light of his lack of experience by saying “I grew up in a religious family,” at which she laughed and relayed her own captivating anecdotes, and by the time they moved in together he had all but forgotten all of the ideas around sex that had anguished him during his adolescence. 

He had not really thought much about that night in all of the years since, either, but did not want to confess that after losing Ysabeau and the twins he had given the full of his mental energy to fretting over his son Louis’ own fragile heath to the point that it might actually be doing his boy harm. He saw the same behavioural patterns that John felt right in condemning, but these predated lockdown and admitting such would force him to entertain good intentions and better advice on which he could not bring himself to act. Why did no one suggest to Constance that her children needed a father, or that she needed a partner, a hobby, a distraction of any sort? Was it simply that she was better at Tinder? Would he have had more success had he a whirlpool in which to sip champagne over the caption “dtf”? In honesty he had been elated that Ingeborg had been revolting and that Margaret had ended their date abruptly, following her interest down the bar to a Swiss playboy with deep pockets. Phillippe simply was not ready to cease with mourning for his late wife, though she had been lost long enough that their son whose choughs had developed shortly after her death could no longer remember what she looked like nor many details about her that extended immediate genealogical arrangement.

In some way, Phillippe was grateful that the pandemic now existed to justify his over-cautious behaviours, that he could spend all of his time monitoring his son in seclusion, away from good intentions and well-meaning advice. Did not everyone hide behind stories to some extent?

After initial horror at the realisation that she might well have been involved in the condom discovered to have exploded a toilet and imploded every hope Phillippe had of not spending his entire adolescence as a social leper, Constance laughed over Zoom on the way Phillippe had avoided having the conversation the group sought from him. Johanna’s response amounted to “ _Yeah, pretty sure he was just checking to see if you had a fever -_ ” to which John added, “ _But in the most power-move way one might: like, hey kid, I realise you just had the shittiest day of your life -pun definitely intended- so let me kick you when you are down in highly chivalric fashion that will keep you up for the rest of the night trying to find a way to word your exact grievance, because he always does confusing shit,_ ” he winked, evoking his own cruel humour, “ _exactly like this.”_

Phillippe had spent the next several days enraged over his perceived maltreatment now that he was given an excuse to view it as such and had gone about making arrangements to attend the hearing in person with the hopes that he could skew testimony in a way unfavourable to Richard’s claim on a maintenance contract regarding the Chunnel, which if he could keep held up in appeals until the 31st of December would be rendered void by a political reality he would be happy to see come to pass, namely the exit of Britain from Europe and, if he played his cards right, the end of cross-Channel movement in full.

In this respect, the Greens were already onside, for less roadway calculated in minds that were not particularly suited to maths to reduced carbon admissions. As though Richard had anticipated that Phillippe had designs on creating delays, he had sent his foreman and half an army of right-wing radicals (who might have simply been brawly white men in construction jobs with no particular politics one way or another) to a climate policy protest, discrediting the message and derailing a vote that would have eliminated Richard’s estimated cost proposal from further consideration as some of the materials he planned to use would have been banned had legislation been allowed to function. 

Phillippe had later been told this was his own misstep by Johanna, who had come up with the scheme and justified her role in it with “ _I’m bored, pubs are closed, nothing on television except Covid and I’m pretty sure these are all reruns from April, and anyway, I need an ally in cancelling my own deal and Richard seems as good an ally as any as you’re unwilling to play.”-_ “ _Netfilx_ ,” Phillippe had told her bluntly, _“can’t you spend a day streaming ‘You’ instead of plunging the continent into chaos?” – “Can’t you get over your ego enough to realise that none of this is about you? You need to get out more, my dude.”_

Maybe she had a point, or would have, had this not become personal for him. He wanted to show his friends that he was doing fine even if he was far from it, and if doing so happened to both punish Richard Plantagenet for something he likely had done in good faith and coincide with lowering carbon admissions to the delight of vegans in homespun sweaters happy to skip lecture on a Friday afternoon, so much the better. Phillippe Capet felt ready for a fight, so ready in fact that he had fired on a friendly force.

God, Phillippe though. It had been a hell of a week and he had again been the source of all of the sulphur.

John, for all of his clear flaws, was clearly trying to placate him. He was wearing a mask, had put on plastic gloves upon entering (after first desensitising his hands), he had wiped his laptop with antiseptic and Phillippe had no real reason to assume he would drop with protocol and precaution when he himself left with the intention of making a slight inconvenience of himself out of a general sense of spite.

He knew he owed him an apology, but failing to come on the exact words, he made a note to stop on the way back and pick up a bottle that said things like “distilled” and “47,5%” to the self-same effect.

“Um … so Louis is pretty good about entertaining himself,” he continued awkwardly as he moved to put on his coat, “You’ll have plenty of quite for revision.”

“Yeah,” John shuffled, “but like you insinuated, I’m a child and -as I mean to force you to accept- so is Louis. I’ll work until he’s finished his internet school room and then we’ll play something that is not ‘go stand by the water cooler and pretend your weekend was more interesting than it was’ and then when you come home we’ll have forgotten the specifics of how our strife manged to manifest itself and you can pay me back for babysitting by ordering a pizza and showing me how to get on to the dark web.”

“This is why it is so difficult to love you,” Phillippe shook his head. Okay. Forget the gin. Or forget letting John leave with the bottle. It was seven in the morning and Phillippe felt he already needed a hard drink. “What makes you think I know how to get onto the dark web?” he could not help but ask.

“You were able to stockpile toilet tissue when it was rationed for the rest of us.”

Phillippe blinked, having expected something far more sinister from his friend’s creative mind. “So, you both think that I have access into illegal marketplaces and that the only thing I’m interested in buying is basic household items?” Was it being insinuated that he was, in fact, _boring_ in addition to being a generally horrible person prone to hurting people who were only trying to lend a helping hand?

“Consider everything about yourself,” John squinted as though he had heard the question Phillippe had not so directly voiced, “and decide carefully and with caution on how much you really want or need me to answer that question.”

“What are you looking for exactly?” Phillippe asked instead, regretting the impulse in an instant. In truth he had no idea how to get on the silk road (making most of his purchases on the equally ethically questionable but still entirely legal Amazon) and no real want to follow John during this particular rabbit hole, but here they both were, which was an issue in and of itself. If he did not leave soon he would not necessarily be late, but he risked not being early and overly caffeinated, which would prove a problem if he meant to put everyone else to sleep with a monotone read of annotated legislation all morning.

“That is the problem,” John complained, “I don’t even know. End User Certificates, maybe, whatever I could potentially get my hands on to kill this deal.”

“What – _literally?”_ Phillippe frowned.

“You know what the problem is?” John posed. “Everything Johanna gets herself up to, the Americans have already done it way bigger and more morally objectionable than we humble Brits could ever possibly manage.”

“I don’t know,” Phillippe challenged, tying his scarf and adjusting his beret in the mirror Ysabeau had hung on the back of the door back when they had been sharing the rent-controlled flat her uncle had arranged under separate surnames, a smug of her lipstick still decorating its upper-right corner beside a postcard she had bought herself that read “Never underestimate the power of a good outfit on a bad day” in swirling script, an added reminded to how much better life had once been as he continued, “Fridays for Future protests are happening everywhere else in Europe your sister shut that down in England by convincing literal Nazis to attend, killing the whole movement by association. I’m sure she -if anyone- can come up with a means of stopping Saladin's brother from buying Newcastle the same week a refugee camp burned and Europe is being faced with another crisis of placement related to this war in Syria no one wants to commit to.”

“Yeah, that is the thing though,” John sighed. “Such tactics wouldn’t have worked in the US because they are so much more fucked than the rest of us and we are all being asked to raise, or maybe lower ourselves to that standard in this sound-bite news cycle. We have Boris Johnson and Brexit and Johanna playing polo with the Ayubbi and the very real possibility of an actual certified war criminal owning a club in the Premiership, they have Trump and children in cages on the southern border and Denis Rodman up in North Korea and the very real possibility of nuclear conflict breaking out, and its not fucking fair! If the whole thing with Fridays for Future happened in Washington rather than London, the white supremacy would be praised and we would all be over here swallowing our vomit rather than trying to think up new and creative ways to hold an infrastructure project up in legislation until reforms kick in, and … I mean can you at least empathise with my dilemma in those terms?”

He could see why Éléonore loved him and his like-named sister least. “Well, no John,” Phillippe shook his head. “Nothing you said registered as anything but deeply problematic, and before your suggestion becomes a question in kind, no, I have no intention of involving myself in this. Spend the day studying and stop letting your siblings drag you down.”

“Not like I have much better to do though.” 

“Yeah,” Phillippe found himself agreeing as he considered the day ahead. “Fucking same.”


	3. Gendered and Pejorative

“This is admittedly awkward,” Phillippe replied to a standard sales inquiry spoken in a disingenuously upbeat tone, “but I am only here to give you my number, and name, address, email, all of those details, too. I was here this morning, about half past seven and you gave me a form to fill out,” he began to explain to the young barista now putting on little effort to disguise her understandable apprehension, chocking on the words he struggled for as he moved to relay them, “but I – the thing is, I went on a single date with this girl before lockdown, and for reasons not related to that – to the pandemic, that is - I, well I ended up ghosting her, which isn’t something I am especially proud of, but it wasn’t going anywhere and it still isn’t, but she was here this morning, too, and, being too much of a coward to cause offence in person, I ended up giving her the paper with all of my contact information and the excuse that I had lost her number and,” he paused, “I realise how uninteresting this all sounds now that I hear myself saying it aloud, but I, in the event that I need to be contacted or if heavens forbid I contracted the virus myself and have put others at risk … I just wanted to do my civil duty here.”

Agnes, as her nametag read, let silence set in as much as location would allow. At midday, the café was bustling with sounds of things made to accommodate a largely absent clientele – milk being steamed into foam, the light buzz of fluorescent lights, inoffensive adult contemporary music of the sort that returned thirty-year old Phillippe to a car seat in his mother’s SUV and the vague notion that his parents were older than he had the capacity to conceive. The boisterous conversations that defined the locale at breakfast had since subsided into the heavy sighs of midlevel functionaries in need of another sip of that chemical substitution to sleep, pressed for time and feeling with every moment spent in a line made artificially long by duct tape markers spaced at a distance the government defined as social that they were too far removed from the desks they longed for at least half the morning to escape. Phillippe felt self-conscious in the perceived impatience and was growing to share it himself when at last the girl behind the counter returned, “I have to say, I’m impressed. Most people wouldn’t think twice about coming back, presuming they bothered with their actual details to begin with.”

“But that is _irresponsible_ , isn’t it?” Phillippe heard himself say, regretting the critique that confessed so much about him as he watched the girl’s shoulders fall into a shrug.

“Most guests are either tourists or elected officials,” she answered, “it is true to form if nothing else. So, which are you?”

“Tourist or elected official? Neither … well,” he felt compelled to explain, “I work for the government but not in such a capacity that I am responsible to a particular constituency or to whosoever money bought my purely rhetorical seat. May I have that form?”

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay for a drink to go with it?” Agnes winked as she pulled a print-out from a pad and handed it to him with a nod towards the disposable cup of disinfected pens she had placed on the counter. “I take my cigarette break in ten, you can go fill this out and I will bring you a coffee on the house.”

“That sounds lovely,” he half-lied, “really, but I,” he shifted, taking pause in her pout, “you know what? Sure, actually, why not?”

There were a number of very legitimate reasons to decline the offer he had been extended. Agnes, though hardly privy to the entire narrative, had from his unbecoming introduction evidence enough as to how he was given to treating women, and Phillippe had reservations about disappointing what he supposed were her ambitions – she could change him, he would want to change for her. Phillippe did, as it happened, want very much to be someone else entirely on this particular afternoon, but it had nothing to do with the intrigue and minor attraction he felt towards someone whose name he only knew from a pin. She was probably right. He should have just let this go and not returned to fix a problem that he alone seemed to have. He had enough problems he was explicit in fostering to take up all of his workday and those moments in between meant to give the mind pause –

But in that respect, perhaps a reprieve in her almost-pleasant company would do something for anger and impulse and the politics of convenience with which he was otherwise in contention.

A few hours earlier, Phillippe had been bewitched and bemused at the idea of furthering what he had mistaken as filtration. He could tell Agnes was younger than him, though with half her face covered it was difficult to access the extent to which this reality should prove worrisome, but as their conversation continued for what it was, he had come to expect that his behaviour was altogether laughable, independent of whichever stereotypes and social faux pas he touched.

“You know you don’t have to feign civilities,” Agnes seemed to tease, “if you’ve neither interest nor time, I won’t take offence, after all, I can’t even tell if you are cute enough to stalk into a coffee chain during a pandemic,” she winked, “which isn’t to say that I would mind finding out, only that you don’t need to be polite.”

“Honestly, I’m not - I’m neither cute nor polite,” he tried to excuse himself, “nor, to be entirely frank all that interesting, but I am interested in having coffee with you if your offer was given in earnest.”

“That we are clear - I _am_ flirting with you, this time, at least.”

The overpriced and frankly overrated café in which he had first made her acquaintance that same morning distinguished itself from the three others on the same street with hanging plants and mismatched furniture. Phillippe had once been a regular. Agnes was new - maybe, that or he could not tell if they had met before from behind a mask, that or he had been drinking his coffee at home for so long that he had gone forgotten any detail of her that he might have committed to memory, though there seemed few to note. She had hazel eyes and shoulder length light brown hair of the shade women for some reason agreed was blonde, she was neither plump nor meagre, average in height and altogether unremarkable until she spoke. He had asked for a latté. She, in turn, had asked for his contact information. Taken slightly off guard by the forward question, Phillippe made a remark in kind.

“ _Has that ever actually worked for you?_ ” Agnes replied as she began to make his drink. “ _Like to the point of it feeling worthy of repeat months after even the memes have fallen from fashion?_ ”

“ _You have me at a loss, I confess_ ,” Phillippe had stammered, hearing his old stutter as he spoke, wondering if it was audible over the milk steamer and why it mattered to him – he had come for a coffee in the sense of drinking it, not in the sense of an awkward first date of the kind that admitted by way of locale that one was not expecting to invest more than forty minutes in acquainting themselves with an interested party. All the same, he could feel himself blush as he continued, “ _I’m not in the practice of having baristas ask for my number. Or … anyone ask at all, for that matter. This is um, I don’t really know that I’m in a place right now to … uh_ ,” he paused, “ _did someone put you up to this?_ ” he asked, looking over his shoulder, half expecting to find a colleague snickering as he floundered in the face of this odd advance.

“ _Um … yeah, you could say that I suppose. It is a matter of public policy … Corona?_ ” she squinted, circled the explanation on the form she handed him before inviting him to pick another from a to-go cup with the word disinfected written on it.

“ _Yes, oh God, yes, of course. How embarrassing. Of course that is what you meant,”_ he chastised himself. _“_ _You’ll need to accept my apologies, I’m afraid, this is the first time I’ve been to a café since before lockdown and I’m – no, that makes sense that you would ask. It is quite good of you to do so._ ”

“ _Oh_ ,” she flustered. “ _In that case I feel I’ve been a bit insensitive, let me um – why don’t you go find a place to sit, you can fill out the obligatory, and I’ll make you another drink and bring it over to you. It will just be a minute._ ”

Phillippe frowned. “ _Why? What is wrong with that one?_ ”

“ _Nothing, just_ -”

“ _Let me see,_ ” he encouraged, curious. She hesitantly slid him a mug with a steam milk sketch of a shape familiar to him from months of news coverage. “ _It was a joke, that is, I thought you were joking – I didn’t realise you had been ill, or_ -”

“ _That is really impressive_ ,” he had said of the virus shape in his drink, assuming it had been a challenge to create. “ _Most who bother just make hearts._ ”

“ _Well_ ,” she had teased, “ _I didn’t want to give you the wrong impression. Again._ ”

Phillippe forced an awkward laugh. Again! she had said. He felt his heart sink slightly, regretting every word spoken since s'il vous plait. “ _I … I see that. Still, can I – not to come off as a worthless millennial after confessing myself a terrible flirt, but I want this image on all of my socials. It is quite impressive, really.”_

Agnes shrugged and nodded towards the form standard. “ _If you want to put down your handle there as well, I may well follow. Don’t know many to have recovered with such a good sense of humour about the whole thing._ ”

“ _Oh, no, no – I was never sick_ ,” Phillippe clarified, suddenly conscious of why the barista had hesitated from sharing her talents. “ _I’m a single father and my son has a pre-existing condition that puts him at high risk, so I’ve been self-quarantining for that reason. Not that you worry_ ,” he smiled from beneath his mask, _“_ _I’m probably have the lowest chance of being a transmitter than anyone you’ve met all morning.”_ Once again, he had found himself regretting his choice of phrase. What he meant to say, naturally, was ‘I think you are funny and I’d like to become better acquainted,’ – what he actually conveyed was ‘I’m myself a joke not even worth sharing when your shift ends.’

_“I don’t know many hypochondriacs who would use that as a selling point, but you’re good. If you want, let me know where I can find you online so you can tag me and the shop and all that shit.”_

“ _Will do, Agnes,_ ” he said reading her nametag. She winked and returned to the growing queue.

Phillippe contemplated the extent to which the barista had spoken in earnest when she asked him to note his online presence, wondering if her interest was purely commercial if in fact existent – she was not the proprietor, perhaps she was looking for a raise. The business itself seemed to be doing well enough within the limitations of modern life, most of the chairs had customers in them, but on closer inspection, he noted as he took a place by the window looking over the street, the tables themselves were empty. Dismissing this for the service of a status update, Phillippe pulled out his phone to take a few pictures of his drink. After hitting send, he took a sip, closed his eyes, and tried to think of anything outside of the morning’s various faux pas for which he was at fault. John, he could reasonably assume from the swiftness of his response had all but forgotten about the truth he had inadvertently offered in jest, returning to comfortable patterns of distraction and doing precisely nothing in terms of revision, not that, Phillippe supposed, he much needed it when he would likely change his life plans as soon as he felt he was being ignored.

Phillippe wondered briefly if he was in fact an enabler of this state, wondering if he stopped paying so much of his mind to the matter if John would come on a better argument for focus all on his own. He probably should not send pictures of his coffee to people he should hope had better things to do than open them with a snort of a laugh, and he should probably focus more on last minute preparations for the day ahead, but the café had grown so foreign in his long absence he felt oddly stimulated by the many things that would have failed to register with him just a few months prior. Who were these men sitting motionless before empty tables, and should he call someone’s attention to their lack of patronage? Perhaps, he considered, he ought to have insisted on a coffee without the shot of black humour that Agnes could see for herself to extent to which her hospitality was coming at a cost to her employer that she might react accordingly and in kind. He imagined going back to the register and her returning with a quip that he was not, at present, drinking anything either. He imagined ordering another as an excuse to further a dialogue but dismissed this though as soon as it entered his mind, fully intent, if nothing else, to not be found in a WC stall by Richard or anyone else so recently after having given cause to revisit an episode of public looseness that saw him covered in shit and shame.

No, he decided. It was better not to act. At any rate, he determined on another quick examination set on defending his inaction, the café was doing well enough for itself for a few tables from him a boy who looked to be on the verge of puberty had bought up enough baked goods to feed a royal court.

Phillippe found himself staring, wondering if the child’s stomach was half as big as his eyes, if was waiting on someone or if he had been stood up, or, alternatively, if not unlike himself, he had mistaken Agnes’ inquiry as flirtatious and had too eagerly taken out his wallet in a display of a sense of worth he had hoped to relay. The kid gave a last forlorn look to his phone, raised his hand and with a snap of his fingers summoned one of the false patrons who handed over a rucksack with a few words in low tones. The boy shook his head and shoved some of the food to the side that he might open a textbook. Was this home-schooling for over-privileged? Was the boy even at home here? Certainly not, Phillippe decided, wishing the false patron who was almost certainly part of a security detail had spoken loud enough for him to determine which embassy or office the child’s parents were attached to. No matter, Phillippe decided quickly. He had important matters of his own to attend. He pulled out his phone, reopened his Office app with the intention of highlighting and making additional notes on a public document he had downloaded and all but since memorised, but beside him the boy suddenly slammed his book shut, leading Phillippe’s attention back in his direction and then in that which the child directed his own.

A convoy stopped before the shop and the boy rose in anticipated greeting. Phillippe opened his camera and snapped a photo as discreetly as he might of the Towne Car with darkened windows and the door that was being open, deleting the image immediately when he found it to contain another child, flushed at what he perceived to be bad form, wondered if he would have been quite so concerned if the passenger had in fact been a corrupt politician or some other sort of unscrupulous crime lord. His phantasy had again gotten the better of him. It had truly been too long since he had left the house; he was over stimulated by the ordinary and in hindsight obvious.

“Really?” the boy with the banquet said to him, shaking his head as he watched Phillip struggle to put his phone back in his jacket pocket.

Phillippe shrugged. “I came here by bike,” he tried to defend, nodding in the general direction of the lamppost against which he had locked it, but the child, it seemed, had already lost interest in his existence. This was for the better.

“ _Ay, Kümple! Na?_ ”

“ _Ay, Kümmel, was geht ab?_ “ the two greeted one another in German before slipping into equally lazy French. Christ have Mercy, Phillippe thought – they were Swiss, or at least they were being educated in that bastard of a country with their ‘nonante’ as opposed to the proper ‘quatre vingt dix’ – probably grounds on which the one felt a need to pull out a maths book at this hour – could not even do the basic arithmetic required to count.

“ _You racist piece of shit_ ,” the other boy shook his head as he sat down. Phillippe opened Google to translate the exchange as much as he might.

“ _You damned enabler, embodying every bloody stereotype of Kurdish punctuality_.”

Kurdish. Hm. So heroine, not oil, Phillippe found himself considering as the boys continued to babble. It was a shame they had each arrived with considerable entourages, not only for the pandemic concerns such might spike, but because there was little where else he might now move to find his inner quite away from their loud and cracking voices. The two were at an age where they presumed that everything they said was original, of great importance and of interests to everyone in their immediate surroundings, had likely never encountered any sort of counter to this age-specific sense of entitlement and, form the appearances they gave, likely never would. Phillippe wondered if Richard would prove as self-centric when their paths were bound to cross as he had always seemed to him when Phillippe himself had been a boy, the money, certainly, was there to allow for such, and if his younger siblings were anything to measure against, the next few months would be a headache unto themselves. John, he considered, at least had enough irony to him to negate the worst of his ego; Johanna had an art about her that instilled an artificial sense of general indifference, which tilted the odds towards the assurance that everyone she met would care greatly that her ends, for what they were, were met, regardless of how petty and base these designs were unto themselves. It was always difficult to say if this was manipulation or laziness on her part and could probably be placed somewhere in between. The problem, naturally, was that she, like her younger brother, was permitted to get away with it without consequence.

In that consideration, Phillippe almost wished his nemesis (as fully unconscious of the description as he in all likelihood was of the man ascribing him to it) would prove as boisterous as the boys with the bloated banter, for at least this would make him warranting of the ire Phillippe had harboured him since John glibly given character and context to a gesture not otherwise warranting of narrative.

“ _And I take it your German ass was here fifteen minutes early?_ ”

“ _As always_.”

“ _My coffee still warm?_ ”

“ _It is not even still there_ ,” the German laughed. “ _You’ll have to grab yourself another._ ”

As though this was likely to happen.

The new arrival said something in rapid-fire Arabic (with even sharper H-sounds than the Swiss dialect demanded) to the man who had opened a series of doors for him. Phillippe did not bother putting anything he thought he might have understood well enough to spell phonetically into Google, assuming the lad had either ordered an over-sweet milkshake pretending to be coffee, or that he himself would soon be dead and it would not matter whose God had sent him to meet his own. He took another sip of his own latté, rubbed his eyes and felt the notion that had just cross his mind a bit too xenophobic to have occurred to him before he had had the chance to sit down with a number of European business leaders and discover through the process of litigation all of the actual, tangible reasons to fear and hate the world beyond France’s boarders.

“ _Anyway, sorry I have been late_ ,” the boy continued to his friend.

“ _Check your tense there?_ ” the other mocked lightly.

“ _At my father’s bequest, I was preoccupied once again with that horse I mentioned weeks back_ ,” he continued without returning to his false auxiliary for correction. “ _It turns out he recently passed away, so it occurred to me to make a donation to The Horse Trust's Home of Rest for Horses in his name, but I could not come on a way of doing so both anonymously whilst at the same time tipping off the press -”_

“ _He had a name?” The horse, I mean?_ ”

“ _Naturally he had a name,”_ the further travelled of the two frowned. _“I think so, he even had a rank in the police force until his retirement._ _It was Bud, and to your information and to mine he did not die from injuries sustained in the Newcastle encounter, he actually went away from that incident unscathed. The perpetrator who punched him served 12 months though, I found out so, but he seems to have turned his life around since._ ”

“ _All is well that ends well?_ ” his friend suggested, finally showing some interest in the food before him.

_“I’m not sure to be honest. In principle I’ve nothing against giving to a good cause, but this is all tied up in politic which is by its nature evil, and in end effect I’m not even entirely sure that this is the message we want to be sending and, presuming it is, would it really be worth the continuation of a farce for another few weeks really be worth the price tag? My father is talking in the low millions, which suggests commitment and moral conviction_ -”

“ _But at the same time a refugee camp burnt a few weeks ago and giving money for horses will only bring such back into the news cycle_ ,” the German finished despite a full mouth, nodding his sympathy.

Shit. Phillippe thought. He knew this boy – he at least, by association knew of the horse of which he spoke. For weeks, he had been trying to hear nothing of it. Johanna Plantagenet, for all of her casual indifference particularly towards the field in which she tampered was quite good at finding football teams for foreign despots to invest in. The deals she struck were not always intended to come to fruition – for often suggestion was enough to purchase public sympathies for all parties involved – but where she was being asked to invent a semblance of legality, there were few who could claim to be so much as on par with her particular machinations. The problem was that in this particular instance, the owner had no real intent on parting with the club in question and had now been left with little way of breaking off negotiations without confessing his own bad faith. The contract had been approved by all of the necessary bodies; Johanna having left no loophole that could see it killed on a technicality. Phillippe did not know how much of this had been active or intentional on his friend’s part, perhaps she was an optimist at heart and was waiting on something terribly deviant to come out of Tyne and Wear to convince the prospective buyer to take his business elsewhere. With pandemic restrictions on social interactions, however, the Geordies could not be counted on to prove a public embarrassment, and part of Phillippe doubted that Johanna had taken this much into account.

Now, she found herself faced with a situation no one wanted to be in and was at something of a loss as to find a way-out whist saving face. She had asked him to look over her dossiers, which Phillippe had flatly refused, having had too often the experience of doing her homework, earning too little of her esteem for his efforts. As he no longer harboured any great desire to spend a night in the arms of someone who met so much of life with an eyeroll (regardless of her physical charms for what they might be), he refused to loose any sleep combing through line items with her for a mistake that – had she bothered herself to make, would have surely been cited by someone of his same status somewhere on the other side of the Channel. Thus lost for an alternative, Johanna made an emotional appeal to her client, at least within the scope limited by her not in fact processing a heart to speak of; she found footage on YouTube of a Newcastle United supporter punching a police horse. The bid had been that the Ayubbi as a collective were so keen on horse sport that they kept the polo league going in a region that had otherwise lost all of its infrastructure (and therefore, Phillippe assessed, semblance and sense) to years of bloody civil war. Adil, she assessed, surely would find the excuse in this act of anti-equine sentiment to fuel doubt he had not otherwise projected –

It seemed to Phillippe however, that the Kurd had wanted to deal to go through all along. If what his reputedly genius son alleged was to be taken at face value, this was most certainly the case, and the woman intent of ruining the beautiful game for her own financial gain had really and truly been played.

Phillippe smiled, wondering if it was too early in the day for schadenfreude as he considered it might well be for his thoughts to give way to private, casual bigoty –

Nope, he decided. Overhearing that Johanna had in respect facilitated her own fall from grace afforded him a certain confidence that her elder brother could, in fact, be gotten at, which was exactly the kind of boost he needed on this grey skied morning.

_“Not with the infection numbers being what they are and to that end, not in the British press – at least according to the intermediary, whose angle in this I can’t quite calculate. At this stage the people of West Yorkshire want a takeover, the politics is against it but unable to do anything about it as everything has been handled above board, the owner is embittered that ‘evil incarnate’ itself seems preferable to his own management and has done nothing in the transfer window to quell opposition,_ ” the boy surmised, “a _nd Johanna’s reaction has been to send my father a YouTube video of a Newcastle supporter punching a police horse to appeal to his sympathies? Or sense of injustice?_ ” he spat. “ _He doesn’t give a damn about football one way or another, I don’t actually think he’s ever gone so far as to watch a match, but he likes horses well enough and now he actually seems to want to buy the club, which could stand in the way of the original objective of using the sales process to facilitate good press_.”

His friend again shrugged. “ _I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, I think owning a football club a savvy investment. You would of course need to put in more up front to finance a trophy, but then you could transition into austerity measures similar to the ones I’m taking_ -”

“ _No offence, Frederick, but Palermo aren’t shit._ ”

“ _But enough has been invested in the academy and the payoff will come at around the point that I come of age, fire the entire staff, see the club managed back up the leagues to a top half of the table finish their first season back in Serie A at which point we can focus on winning silverware,_ ” the boy smiled.

Shit, Phillippe thought, trying to access the child’s age against his clear capabilities towards constructive disillusionment. He could not have been much older than twelve or thirteen, he decided, wondering if cynicism was a feature of Frederick’s character, of the modern era, or just the sort of privilege that permitted him to think of owning a sport franchise as a common occurrence. Phillippe was certain in the way Frederick spoke that the boy read the news, but that his reactions to it were impersonal – he had no way of understanding a world he had been shielded from and this, Phillippe doubted to ever develop. He wondered if he was setting Louis in the same mould, letting him pretend to be an adult because absent all of the denotes of youth – playdates and playgrounds and being present for lessons – such simply seemed appropriate for someone whose world had been reduced to eighty-two metres square. Would he grow into a prepubescent white-collar criminal if he kept standing by the water cooler, watching his father conference with lawyers in their own language? Phillippe could not believe that he felt badly for a lad who processed such a portfolio as Frederick, but he mentally seemed to have skipped childhood altogether and this was a shame. Perhaps, he mused, it was not that kids grew up too fast, it was that their parents were otherwise too preoccupied with securing their futures that families had lost any sense of the present.

“ _The challenge you would be facing now that I have a think on it actually wouldn’t be as great_ ,” Frederick continued, “ _you would just have to keep Newcastle out of the relegation zone for a few consecutive seasons and politically, I mean, you would never have to worry about western sanction threats regardless of what your uncle’s arsenal looks like by the time you are old enough to – I’m a bit cloudy on how one comes to power over there_.”

“ _Normally it is just a matter of locking the rest of the family in a hotel for a few months_ ,” his friend smirked.

“ _Yeah,_ ” Frederick snorted, “ _until you do that._ ”

Hearing this, Phillippe chocked on his coffee as he swallowed, causing him to cough.

“ _I’ve been here for all of thirty minutes and I’ve already managed to trigger a millennial_ ,” Adil’s son observed dryly, gesturing with a sweep of his arm in Phillippe’s direction.

“ _Insta Story._ ”

“ _Nah, don’t take this wrong bro, but whereas ‘all my friends are ethnic minorities’ builds your street cred, the reverse isn’t also true_.”

“ _I love that we can text about algebra all morning and I somehow walk away from this looking as though anything in my life or scope of interests would lend itself to an interesting narrative when actually … you are kind of the whitest kid I know, sans the almost owning a top flight club bit. That really confesses a loose relation to a would-be dictator._ ”

“That’s fucking racist,” his friend responded and they both shared a laugh.

“ _More so than ‘Kummel’?”_ Phillippe questioned.

At this, the Kurd turned to him directly. “ _Yo, look – racism in itself is a western construction born out of the Enlightenment that you’ve forced upon the rest of the world largely because of your unwillingness to view it in terms you did not invent. Where I come from, we don’t have a history of social hierarchy based on skin colour or other physical characteristics dated and long disproved pseudo-science sought to classify as a means of alleviating the market economy from moral objections that might otherwise be present, for we have clan ties that work to the same effect but without extending existing conflict to other societies with no reason or want to understand its specifics. Ironically, sudden mass immigration has put Europe into the same tribal mindset of misjudging the availability of resources and meeting this with mistrust and resentment rather than establishing government policies to negate the perception of economic strain; which, I suppose, is only to say that it is easier to be angrier with yourselves over an idea you have collectively deemed ‘problematic’ yet are wont to ascribe to everyone who doesn’t look like you than it is to admit that the democratic concept born of the same age and likewise forced on peoples with no particular use for it, again with respect to fiscal interests, is every bit as flawed._ ”

“ _Damn, drop the fucking mic Kamil_ -”

“ _And you_ ,” Kamil interrupted, reverting his attention to Frederick, “ _we invented algebra, so you don’t get to pretend that that is a ‘white’ thing. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk._ ”

“ _The Greeks invented algebra,_ ” Fredrick returned.

“ _The Greeks ‘invented’ algebra the same way they ‘invented’ democracy, which is to say that Europeans of the mid to late eighteenth century had cause to credit ancient texts they were free to interpret without counterargument as opposed to civilizations with whom they had conflict with in living memory, the Ottomans, the Americans_ -”

“ _But as you just went through labours to establish, you don’t consider yourself to be a Turk, or an Arab_ ,” Phillippe commented, hating himself for getting into a pointless argument with over-engaged children, and one he felt bound to lose at that.

“ _As I worked to establish, political geography and identity bear less relation than convenience is wont to ascribe. Are you from here?_ ”

“ _From Paris?_ ” Phillippe squinted.

“ _Was that a question or an answer?_ ” Kamil tried to clarify.

“ _Both … maybe?_ ” Phillippe flustered.

“ _And where do you work, if I might inquire?_ ”

“ _The European Commission for Construction, Building and Infrastructure, representing the interests of the Minister Delegate for Foreign Trade and Economic Attractiveness who attached to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affair and the Minister Delegate for Transport, attached to the Minister for the Ecological Transition, respectively_.”

“ _As a rule, the more words that exist in your title the less important you are_ ,” Frederick quipped. “ _But it sounds like you’re the guy my guardian’s like to spend the morning chastising, so I don’t know man, best of luck to you. Do you want a muffin or something? Like it won’t help, but at least you won’t be hungry._ ”

“ _So, you are European – presumably, even though I’d hazard to say that you are not German like the reigning majority_ ,” Kamil continued, ignoring his friend’s sudden unease.

“ _I … sure?_ ” Phillippe answered of the offered breakfast, at once trying to make sense of how he could have been so caught off guard by an exchange he had not intended to enter.

“ _How ‘European’ do you then feel when Les Blues are playing someone France has been at war with half a hundred times_?”

“ _Every bit as European as I feel declining contract proposals on otherwise negligible technicalities,_ ” he replied with indignance.

Frederick held up his hands as he offered an interjection, “ _Kamil, I see where this is going, but you misunderstand the concept of the EU. The whole reason Europe has managed to escape armed conflict for seventy odd years is because we are too busy wasting each other’s time to possibly commit to open hostilities._ ”

“ _White people are fucking exhausting_ ,” Kamil surrendered.

“ _And that is not racist?_ ” Phillippe wondered.

“ _At the most it is ‘integration’,_ ” Frederick shrugged, motioning for one of his men to pass a pastry over the Phillippe from the table with an ‘X’ on it that served as a barrier.

“ _Is it so? About Europe only working because its member states don’t wish to work together?_ ” Kamil blinked. How terribly innocent the notion had not occurred to him before. Perhaps there was hope for the youth of today, Phillippe mused, nodding although the question had been directed at Frederick. “ _I’m curious now though, what is going to happen when Brexit kicks in?_ ”

“ _A number of companies with interests on the continent will continue a pattern we have already seen established of relocating from London to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg, et cetera, there will be a small recession in Britain which history will barely note because within, I don’t know, fifteen years or so if history is anything to go on, Europe will find itself engulfed in one of those continuous series of scattered conflicts that will come to be known by the duration of hostilities rather than the ‘ideological’ grounds that are being argued with arms_ ,” Phillippe took liberty to answer.

“ _And then England will go back to profiteering and make up for whatever deficits have been forced upon her by the fact that no one is willing to negotiate a ‘soft’ exit – so if you are asking if now is really a good time for your dad to be buying a club in the Prem, I’d say it is the only time, I mean, unless your family somehow comes into oil money and Russia for some reason breaks of trade relations with Brussels via Berlin_ ,” Frederick elaborated.

“ _Good to know. Were it only that all politics were hypothetical_.”

“ _Sorry if this should come as a disappointment_ ,” Phillippe said, “ _but all politics are_.”

“ _True,_ ” Frederick echoed. “ _And everyone has their price, add two percent to whatever Miss Plantagenet’s pay cut is and she’ll get the council or customs or whomever to do whatever you want. I mean, if anyone could be said to be raised in the rhetorical backrooms were deals are made … check it, her dad straight up murdered an MP when she was a little kid, everybody fucking knew it and Henry still stayed in power for another two decades. I’m sure his kids know all the tricks_.”

“ _I’m not otherwise superstitious, but I always thought her to be a djinn. Like literally. A shadow without light, neither good nor evil in essence but unable to interact with humanity without causing chaos. Part of me thinks that if Ashley can’t be convinced to sell, she’ll announce a deal with Southerland the next day just to watch the fallout from wherever she is quarantining. Might be the best of all of the worst cases scenarios I can envision here_.”

“ _I think there is a good chance your Dad goes into the WC after a conference call and says Allahu Akbar a few times but that it has nothing to do with superstition._ ”

“ _For Christ’s sake_ ,” Phillippe buried his brown in his palms, trying to rid himself of the mental image that had been forced upon him, an image he at that point had little notion he would find a means of exploiting to his own ends. “ _Just buy her a fucking Rolex if you are so worried about winding up with the Magpies, HMRC will cite possible corruption and the deal will be dead. Why does an industry that is set up not to function look for a political solution where there is a clear and obvious bureaucratic one?_ ”

“ _With respect, we know how to kill a deal, it is just about controlling the narrative around it, which no offence meant, bureaucracy isn’t great at. Like you are trying to send a message to other member states that leaving the EU will come at a heavy cost by tying up a joint infrastructure project and it is entirely transparent and it looks really, really bad to everyone looking on._ ”

Frederick shook his head and laughed. “ _I think Richard probably has it tied up. Seems to me unlike his siblings he only plays to win, and you are kind of picking a weird hill to die on here if you really want to bring of formal hearing. Oh well! Bound to serve some morning amusement at least so long as we two are on the run_.”

“ _From what exactly?_ ” Phillippe inquired.

“ _Oh we’re just here for the Maths Olympics, but being that it is frowned upon for competing schools to openly fraternise, we thought – what is the most boring thing that we could do on our prep day that even the most precocious of our individual team mates would not themselves hazard to attend that we not be seen together by anyone looking to take out respective spots, and anyway, we came up with this infrastructure inquiry my guardian was complaining about, and these pretentious assholes who say the same about us are probably at the Louvre or some such pedestrian shit._ ”

“ _Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, revising?_ ”

“ _No point,_ ” Frederick dismissed. “ _I’ll take first place, Kamil here second -_ ”

“ _Not on your life_ ,” Kamil objected. Fredrick put his unfinished plate on an adjacent, empty stool and reopened his textbook, evidently keen to quiz his friend on whatever had captured his focus before he had the benefit of company. Phillippe could not follow the exchange word for word and doubted he would have had much success even if he otherwise processed a conversational understanding of German and/or Arabic between which the two seemed to seamlessly switch (assisted in this by H-sounds made yet harder by their geographic malposition), but he observed them for a few minutes more until the whimsy of childhood excitement manifested interest and worry as undefined hope often did in those incapable of themselves actualising it. He put a google on Frederick Hohenstaufen and found out that he had, in fact, owned a football club since he was three years old though a series of compounded coincidences that could well have filled a court’s entire docket were Byzantine intrigues not the status quo of business in the continent’s south. He sent Johanna a text asking her if she knew what a djinn was to which she responded rather curiously a few minutes later, presumably having just woken up.

>> _Are these two things related?_ <<

Phillippe scrolled up, saw the picture he’d quite nearly forgotten having sent over a caption that read ‘So, looks like I have Corona. You think it is too late to call in sick?’

>> _No. Almost. I’m at a coffee shop (not the fun kind)_

_watching Kamil Ayuub (or do they say the surname first?)_

_do his maths homework and he called you that in passing._

_You should go lay siege to something, I don’t know. I’d_

_Avoid bringing horses though._ <<

>> _Oh damn. I thought you were going to put_

_them in the game, but that actually would have_

_been cool so I don’t know how it crossed my_

_mind in regard to your person. Say hi for me_

_then_.<<

How disappointing. He had been awaiting a more dramatic response. Maybe she needed an espresso in the morning, too.

>> _Hi??? He called you a chaos demon._ <<

>> _Cultural relativity, dude. That isn’t actually an insult on_

_its face_.<<

>> _Anyway, even if it was meant as such most language_

_that gets thrown in my direction is gendered and_

_pejorative, so I’ll take it._ <<

The notion took him from his immediate thoughts. In a better world, or at least in a world where he was a better friend, he would have written her that he was sorry that he had been such a cunt of late, that in truth he was not _exactly_ sorry per se, but having met the young ward of the President of the European Commission, he could not well sit by and let another over-privileged, over-educated and over-indulged child possibly gain procession of an underperforming team in a sport he bothered himself with for sake of the false sense of masculinity it inspired within him. Instead of saying this immediately and directly, he thought of possible ways he could pun her name with language only American rappers got away with using and was so preoccupied with the task that he hardly had taken note of the approach of the only woman whom he would casually refer to as a bloody rag.

“ _Phillippe? I … is that seat taken?_ ”

“ _Ingeborg_ ,” he said slowly as the realisation sank in. “ _Sure, it is yours, I - I was just leaving_.”

“ _Are you? It has been ages. Can’t we take a moment to catch up a bit?_ ”

Catch up? He had run when she had leaned in to kiss him and seen a relationship request from her on Facebook a few days later. Even if he were the bother with niceties, his pleas would likely go as unheard as his screams evidently had been. He had to get himself out of this, but he felt his path blocked by the gaze of the café’s other two guests and the entirety of their shared entourage.

“ _I’d love to, really, I would. But I – do you have my number?_ ” he tried to manoeuvre, grateful that in respect to his estimation of the barista’s age he had left Facebook off his list of social media accounts, afraid of confessing his own. At least this way Ingeborg would not be outright offended, but then maybe it would play more into his favour if she were. He did not know if she followed him anywhere else, but he suspected it was likely given that she had shown up in this place which was not exactly in the immediate vicinity of the Sorbonne after he had tagged it. The whole thing made him feel dirty, vulnerable and exposed, and lost as he was to the moment he failed to consider those he risked inviting in his escape. _“I changed phones and I must have lost yours_ ,” he explained, handing her the form he had been given to fill out as he proceeded to repack his bag. “ _Here_ ,” he bade her, “ _take this – it is all my contact info, we can do this another time, but now I really must be off_.”

“ _This is way better than the Louvre,_ ” one of Fredericks men commented.

“ _Son_ ,” another retainer replied, “ _this is better than the opera. God damn_.”

As Phillippe waited for Agnes, reliving moments of his day he wished he had been able to skip the first iteration of, it was easy to forget what brought him back on his lunch hour. He took the muffin from his carrier, wondering if it would be appropriate to eat it now, wondering if anything spoke against it given that the item had been purchased at the same establishment and still worse the paper form that distinguished it as such. An glass ash tray hit the corner of the table he had taken under the building’s awning, fearing it might yet rain and he looked up to find a face he recognised looking back at him.

“Is that Megan Markel?” he smiled at the image in the milk-on-espresso masterpiece he had been presented. Agnes, it struck him, was far more physically alluring with the full benefit of her own face working towards her favour.

“I won a barista challenge with that design,” she explained, though Phillippe could not avert his attention back to that of which she spoke. “Thought you might like it as from what I overheard this morning you seem as set on bring down Britain as the original American Princess.”

“You are amazingly talented. Art student?” he hazarded to guess.

“Archaeology,” she corrected. “Graduated. Hate to say it but even if travel wasn’t restricted this is probably what I would be doing to put food on the table.”

“It is not so bad,” Phillippe answered, “I have a friend who read the same to less success.”

“Yeah?” Agnes nodded as she lit herself a cigarette, offering Phillippe an open package from which he politely declined. “What is he doing now?”

“Economics. Maybe, provided he’s not changed his mind again.”

“Indecisive isn’t the worst state,” Agnes shrugged. “I’m about to be kicked off my parent’s health insurance, so I should have stayed on for a year, gotten a teaching certificate, but last summer it did not look like my dig would lose its funding and no one had any way to know that this summer would not happen full stop, so it is what it is as they say in politics.”

“When is your birthday if I may be so bold? Maybe I can take you out, take your mind off it.”

Agnes seemed to consider the suggestion. “Oooh … I was about to suggest that we best do something completely reckless, but I suppose walking into a shopping centre would carry the same risk as sky diving these days, so why not … Phillippe,” she read from his personal details, “I’m in.”

“When then?” he asked again.

“You can find out when I social media stalk you later. My profiles are all public, so you needn’t add or follow back.”

Were his hopes too high? Were hers?

“I don’t post much,” Phillippe said sheepishly.

Agnes gave him a look that felt at once inquisitive, mocking, and as a result a tad alluring. “I wouldn’t expect that you _would_ , why I am willing to put in the effort if I am honest. I feel I read considerably less since the pandemic, and this might just be corollary to my having finished higher education last year, who can say – but I read significantly more about reading itself and evidently in times like this it is better to lose oneself in poetry than it is to try to tackle a novel, so barely active Twitter accounts are kind of my jam at the moment.”

“I don’t know if that is necessarily true about poetry,” Phillippe mused, hoping to come across as at least intelligent if he could not match her for wits at the moment. “I think Homer, Dante, Ferdowsi, Heine and Hughes would all beg to differ.”

“Are you a big fan of literature, then?”

“Only when I’m talking to pretty girls who are plainly smarter than I myself can claim.”

Before Agnes could respond, his phone buzzed than buzzed once more. Phillippe swiped the screen to ignore the call, then moved to unlock the device in order to silence it. “I’m sorry, I, this is rather rude of me,” he acknowledged. “Put this away.”

“No, no, if you need to take that -”

“I did something cruel to a friend to help meet a short-term professional goal and I don’t know that she is exactly aware yet,” he explained, unprompted, looking for absolution in any form it might be granted to him, “or if I can fix things before they can adversely affect her in any lasting way.”

The frank admission seemed to give Agnes some measure of pause. “It is always so hard to tell if you are serious.”

“Do you know much about sport washing?” he replied.

“Not really,” she frowned, elongating the modifier to the extent that it sounded as if she was asking a question she did not trust herself to voice, “but like I said I’ve been on a few digs and can attest that Vanish will take care of grass stains as advertised.”

“No, um – Josef Ayuub, the Kurd who somehow qualifies as a pan-Arab nationalist in liberal media-”

“One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?”

This clearly was not the conversation she expected to be having during her 10-minute routine suicide attempt, Phillippe frowned.

That made two of them, at least.

“Yeah, uh – I really, really did not want to get involved in this, and believe me, I’ve said no at several points when asked to use my expertise to intervene, but to the point - his brother, Ayuub's, is in talks of buying an English football team as a means of reputation laundering as oligarchs are wont to do, and after getting completely schooled on everything from the Enlightenment to economics by a pair of preteens this morning including a nephew, I brought them on the notion of killing the deal via luxury gifts that could register as briberies. The two kids countered that bureaucracy has been subpar in controlling the narrative of late, I got to work this morning and my new boss called me out on exactly the same argument. So I,” he paused, “with all of this fresh in my mind when I got to my desk, I made a call to a colleague over at HMRC saying that I had reason to believe the Plantagenets were engaged in corruption as I suspect they soon might be. Then I went and talked one of the major plaintiffs in this case I’m assigned to into thinking an engagement between his sister and a warlord’s brother was a splendid idea and that he had thought of it all on his own, as such, if nothing else, would quell said corruption claims. I don’t really think he thinks that far ahead - and we are talking about the span of a few months at most,” Phillippe tried to defend, to himself as much as his company, “but this will both keep him personally distracted during court proceedings and weaken his public esteem, for such ties are only acceptable when both families have ties to oil, or so I have been told. “

“Sounds about right,” Agnes said after a long exhale.

“So that is where I am at and that – that is what this is,” he nodded in the direction of his mobile, silent but still illuminated with incoming calls. Anyway, several versions of this will hit the tabloids in the next few days, and on one hand I’m elated – but actually I just want to wash my hand of this entirely and return to the things that would normally have me in a cold sweat in a situation that should be simple: should I admit that I was just texting my mate about out D&D table? Should I have been a bit less honest from the start with someone I have reason to want to impress? Do I have any other organic opportunities to be honest whatsoever? Am I talking way too much about myself to the most interesting woman I’ve encountered in recent memory?” he worried.

“In order then?” she asked with a teasing smile. “Not surprised in the least to have a look at you; your honesty is what is impressive about you; nothing in this world is organic with the exception of over-priced produce; and no, but only because I learned a new word - ‘Sport Washing.’”

“Noted,” Phillippe could not help but to chuckle.

“So listen … break is almost over, but this has been fun. Is it alright if I call you at this number if I wanted to say something other than ‘you should have yourself tested?’”

“Say what then?” he smiled.

“Maybe I’ll tell you when my birthday is and you in turn can suggest something dangerous we can do to celebrate my being kicked off my parents’ health coverage during a global pandemic,” she suggested.

“Is it soon then? Your birthday?”

“I’ll ring,” she winked ask she rose from her seat beside him. “Don’t worry. Well, do. Please do. Please do worry about finding a way of topping ‘I found a way of romanticizing infrastructure and with fake marriage plots at that’ because life can otherwise prove so dull these days.”

“It is so hard to tell if you are being serious,” he echoed her earlier sentiment, confessing in his posture how very much he hung to whatever words she had on offer, regardless of their actual sentiment.


	4. Frankincense and Myrrh

Phillippe Capet could not have been described as particularly attentive that evening and would not have gone so far as to claim the contrary had such a question been posed - largely owing to the fact that he would not have heard it. He nodded occasionally, making small sounds of agreeance or abhorrence as his friend’s shifting tone suggested relevant, feeling that he had been right in the critique that began the conversation unto itself but unwilling to fall into an argument to defend his view, especially where anything he said would confess him to be fully out of his element.

He had come home to find a fort of bed linens and couch cushions erected in his living room, John and Louis hidden within, watching a video on the phone of the former whilst he explained symbolism and cultural significance within the song whilst Louis’ eyes widened with the exposure. Phillippe, who spent enough of his day acting as a sort of censor and on this day in particular not in the mood to continue in this role after work, had sent his son to his room with a new colouring book, scolding John briefly thereafter by way of comparison (‘ _Would Constance allow this?_ ’) against which he encountered a counterargument he might have anticipated (‘ _Is Stan my mum now?_ ’) and a question which, though in all likelihood rhetorical allowed him to change the subject however briefly (‘ _What’s crawled up your backside?_ ’)

Phillippe explain his day from start to end – his whimsical encounter with the lovely barista Agnes; the unfortunate run in with Ingeborg; Kamil Ayyub’s somewhat prejudiced yet oddly precise understanding of public relations with the west; Frederick Hohenstaufen’s over-priced-pastry flex and the disconcerting comments he made throwing him a muffin; how these played out almost immediately upon his entering his own dust-covered office; and, naturally, how he was able to convince Richard when he by chance encountered him at the urinals that there was a chance that Johanna would be faced with very public corruption charges – charges he could easily put a stop to if he acted fast.

He had told him in short order that Adil had gifted Johanna a Rolex, that the same such gesture had brought down an entire cabal within FIFA within recent memory, and that (as there was very little chance that Johanna for all of her gifts would likewise be able to land a high paying job on Bayern München’s board in this watch-based fall from grace) it was within her immediate interest to engage herself to her client, for no one could assert claims of bribery over tokens of affection.

It helped that Richard was a romantic at heart, it helped that Johanna decidedly was not, and naturally it helped that with the holidays fast approaching, their mother Eleanor was in the midst of her bi-annual tirade, imploring Johanna to be more like her sisters in terms of personal fulfilment (which in essence meant marriage and procreation), a task she took to delegating to her other children when Johanna inevitably stopped taking her calls.

As soon as he had made this suggestion – casually, but with concern (‘ _as Johanna’s friend_ ’) Phillippe returned to the memo he had found that morning awaiting him on his computer monitor, rang his boss’ extension and explained to one Lotario dei Conti di Segni that he was so sorry to have kept him waiting, it was merely that he had overheard a troubling conversation that same morning – namely that the Plantagenets planned to marry their assets to the Ayyubi, a rumour he had to confirm before making a suggestion to the Commission itself. Forget Brexit politics in their entirety, he had warned, if the European Union were to rule in favour of a contractor with direct ties to the belligerents responsible for the refugee crisis that played a large part in turning individual national elections strongly to the right, this could break up the single market over the span of the next cycle. Whether di Segni heard this as ‘ _and the AfD won’t be as accommodating of the misappropriation your native Italy brags about as the CDU has been over the course of the last four consecutive governments_ ’ – or, as Phillippe rather suspected ‘ _Death to the infidels! Europe united in Christ!_ ’ instead was ultimately irrelevant; he had done as he had been asked and created ground for objection to a contract that had already been approved under every measure of scrutiny a succession of governing authorities could produce.

Relaying this had expected John to take some greater amusement in the news that his brother had fallen so easily into an obvious trap, but John had merely listened patiently as Phillippe outlined his machinations and the events to inspire them - clearly annoyed at times but unwilling to offer outright complaint. Phillippe shrugged this off, assuming John’s unspoken criticism laid in the reality that Mike Ashley would in all likelihood continue to own Newcastle United as a result of these intrigues, (something that amounted to little more than value signalling on part of his friend whose side of some sympathy had not themselves played the Magpies in the Prem since 1999.)

When Phillippe had finished explaining why -more or less - he was too exhausted to entertain John’s explanation as to why Childish Gambino’s _This is America_ video was the standard against all modern art should be judged (be this as it may, Phillippe still did not think it was appropriate for his six year old to have been exposed to themes for which he had neither the maturity nor intellectual basis for understanding) though he himself was still not committed enough to get into it (especially when he supposed that the same arguments he made to the nature of Louis’ innocence could be given for himself as well.) John continued all the same and he simply listened, or, at least, pretended to, until reaching his phone from his pocket, intent on looking up a term he did not understand but did not want to inquire after in so many words (worried that this would confess him to be uncool if not something far more objectionable) ultimately finding himself instead distracted by the news ticker on his lock screen:

_Corona._

_Corona._

_Corona._

_Trump._

_Corona._

_Corona._

_Man beheaded in Paris._

_Corona._

It was a lot to take in.

“You can’t possibly answer if she does ring,” John Plantagenet deviated from whatever speech he was giving when he (however correctly) took Phillippe’s disengagement to be disinterest. “You know that, right?”

“Because we are about to go into a second lockdown?” Phillippe responded with a sigh, awkwardly locking the screen of his smart phone and returning his gaze to his sometimes-friend, himself looking more angry than he seemed particularly injured by the common, casual slight he had been dealt. “Sorry,” Phillippe adjusted, “I wanted to check the news ticker-”

“Well, I was going to be more topical in my critique of your whimsical coffee shop encounter and simply point out that you said this bird smokes and as you never tire of reminding any of us, ‘Louis has asthma’,” he mimicked in an extended whine, “but since you bring up the day’s news – yeah mate, why don’t we go there? Talk for a sec about how you always have to play God and try to affect outcomes bound to occur without you interacting in any way beyond affixing your stamp to a standardised form?

“This infrastructure project was always going to meet delays bound to supersede the Brexit deadline as just a matter of course,” John began to rant.

“Brexit,” Phillippe heard himself repeat dryly. It was in moments like this that he found himself sincerely wishing that HBO had dragged out Game of Thrones for another several seasons – not that he felt the ending rushed in and of itself, only ill-timed; when there series was still on the air, people like John with no great personal investment in the actual world took the most of their frustrations to King’s Landing, which had at least been something Phillippe did not mind entering into hypotheticals around much unlike Brexit which had come to replace fictional politics in rhetoric. Could the broadcaster not have done more to insure more of an overlap? Though every bit as based in the dark medieval fantasy of over-fed, middle aged white men as its conversational predecessor, Phillippe found he could not give much credence to any blanket statement beginning with a reference to the next deadline – however legitimate the rest of the critique might well be. John, for reasons he neither pretended to understand nor for which he could feign enough interest in to inquire around, seemed to take the withdrawal from the EU personally – so much so that he was willing to restructure his familial conflicts within its fame.

“You could have stayed at home in your pyjamas,” John continued, boisterously and with wide, sweeping gestures, “filled whatever paperwork – or sent it back to some corporate lawyer I guess would be a better summary of what it is your day to day entails, seen in news ticker your distraction tabs and have called it a day at like eleven this morning, said fuck it and just watched MCU on Disney + all the day and you would have still gotten exactly what you wanted from showing up and selling my brother on a plan to wed Johanna to Adil Ayyub. Like what the actual fuck, my man? I get negative partisanship as a concept and I don’t really care what you were thinking on those grounds since your attempt at implementation only confesses your inability to substantiate whatever corruption claims you created to make binary legislation a more interesting read – but why you have to drag my sister into this?”

Was he inquiring in earnest? How preposterous! How self-imposing! This, Phillippe considered, was why no one he knew professionally considered England all so great of a loss (and consequently why he could not talk about anything however loosely related to Brexit with anything approaching the same sympathy he found he held towards fictional characters.)

“Because she literally asked me -” Phillippe began.

“She didn’t ask you to extend your particularly angry form of chauvinism to every single thing she’ll do over the course of her life from here out,” John interrupted, falling into gross hypothetical overstatement as he continued, “She defeats this deal she brokered? Or sees it or another to completion? That is all going to be attributed to her sexuality and the fact that such did not even cross your mind speaks to your own view of her and I mean … that is fucking harsh. Kind of thought she was your best-friend-by-default.”

In a sense, Phillippe supposed, she was – at least when their group of four got together for whatever mundane engagement. John and Constance had found a way to structure most of their adult lives into a ceaseless round of petty banter with one another, which left Phillippe looking to Johanna for empathy and understanding and left Johanna, respectively, rolling her eyes at her younger brother and former sister-in-law as she did with everything else that she encountered. If this made them close, however, was debatable for Phillippe found it easy enough to reduce Johanna to her physical attributes, easier, in fact, than he did in the individual cases of most other women to enter his consideration. Such had come up in various conversations among lads, and at least in one instance it had been pointed out to him that women were under so much pressure to meet a certain beauty standard that Johanna’s achievements in kind spoke to nothing in her character beyond organisation and engagement, characteristics that were respected in men but were criticised in women, be it directly or in dismissive thoughts with regard to how they might behave between the sheets and whose company they coveted in that respect.

Phillippe, who respected Johanna enough at least not to personally covet her flesh (albeit only after having emptied himself into her years before when they had both been recently widowed without himself feeling emotionally fulfilled in any sense after the fact) never considered this reproach to pertain to him directly and continued to comfortably reduce his ‘best-friend-by-default’ to the fact that most felt themselves physically inadequate when she entered the room.

None of this, of course, or so he assured himself, designated particular disrespect – Johanna was good enough at showing Kurdish warlords thirty-five-second stagings of _Equus_ on YouTube that it mattered little to him how clothed she was over the course of such dealings. Yes! Phillippe thought, feeling rather self-righteous in his sudden assessment that a woman should be respected for the reality that their morality could so easily be called into question. This was practically feminism, it was. Taylor Swift herself could get a good half an LP out of the same sentiment. Were that everyone should be quite so open minded as he had proven!

“Your mother made a career of the fact that these underlining prejudices continue to permeate our culture,” Phillippe countered, assured he had done no great wrong, that there was precedent for the few headlines Johanna might be the subject of and that this, potentially, might well prove something of a conquest for her.

“My mother made a career _despite_ of it,” John spat. “And _your_ job, Phillippe? It is just saying the state needs more money in a language that no one speaks. You are not playing an allegorical game of chess; you are a fucking pencil pusher embittered by the fact that your friends have jobs that lend themselves to interesting narratives in their own right.”

“You have a very concise definition of what qualifies work for someone who literally gets paid to attend lectures,” Phillippe drolled.

“And you have a fragile fucking ego for someone who goes out of his way to DM what should be a straight-forward process just because your D&D table wasn’t feeling like rolling dice with you last week,” John returned, considerably less bemused. “Anyway – when you were telling all of this to your manic pixie dream girl, did you include the bit about you getting owned by some disenchanted teenagers -cause that really shows you to be middle-aged there, oh boy,” he shook his head, “or was the focus just about how you -in the scope of a single morning- cowardly lead on a clearly lonely girl who you’ve already had a laugh about and ought simply leave in peace _and_ misused my sister’s name in a conspiracy that serves nothing but your own sense of personal relevance, coming at this poor working girl like ‘ _oh but let me try and game you, too, hoe_.’”

Phillippe resented the language but had to consent, however begrudgingly, to the sentiment.

John was probably right that he could not possibly answer if ever Agnes were to ring, but even knowing that in this case, at least, he was in the wrong as he simply was not ready for a relationship, he felt the same delicate trembling of those fluttering, lepidopterous wings deep within him when he considered her light heart and black humour. He had in part confessed as much to John hoping for a ‘spontaneous’ plan for the date she proposed to emerge in the course of conversation, but this, it seemed, was never to transpire. He looked again at his phone, knowing he had not missed a call, missing Agnes all the more for it -

It was better to cut his losses now, give up and fully surrender himself to the humdrum of occasionally being privy to and part of the Plantagenet siblings interpersonal squabbling – which meant, at least for the moment, letting John some ground to ally himself to his newly raised banner.

“I did get this sinking feeling that she thought she might ‘be the one to change me’,” Phillippe shrugged, looking at his friend with a smirk he rather assumed would be shared in this respect.

“Ingeborg?” John frowned.

“No, Agnes.” Christ! It hurt to even let her name from his unworthy lips. Had she mistaken something of chauvinism in his conflicts with a girl he had gone with all of once or with his small role in furthering his boss’ crusade? He wished he had gotten her number as well that he might ring straight away to clarify the full of his intentions before they could settle into a conflict between them. He wished the night to pass quickly, but with enough of a pause within which he could find the words to better explain himself, to properly apologise for the way in which he might have come off as callous and uncaring if need be.

For his part, John buried his eyes in his palms and moaned almost as though he had been confronted with Phillippe’s innermost, “Why, oh why are you actively courting the company of children?”

What an accusation! Phillippe had admitted that Agnes was slightly younger than he was, but he had hardly implied there was anything illicit or immoral in the attraction as it existed. Furthermore, did this not speak to John’s own range of attraction and appeal? Surely most of the undergrads he met at semester parties and spent the night with were his juniors by a near decade. What hypocrisy! No, Phillippe decided. He was not even going to entertain this comment giving its source.

“Louis prove too much for you?” he shifted, his tone a fixed warning.

“Nah, man,” John shook his head. “We made a fort, taught him how to Vossi Bop, it was good but um, he is also six. Stan works in a hospital and has to self-quarantine in her own home most nights as a result, so I’m always over there keeping tabs on Eleanor and Alix and Arthur and no joke, the closer they are to puberty the harder it is to have a conversation with them. Ells is always banging on about being a prisoner in what should be her home, not getting to see her little friends, she’ll never fall in love or see the world and all of this hyperbolic rhetoric that age group is given to and I get the blame in that respect because her mum isn’t around exactly and Eleanor isn’t old enough to have a sturdy concept of contagion or local politics. But even recognising this,” he complained, “I can’t help but take some measure of offence -I’m trying to make life and lockdown as comfortable as possible for her and her siblings and it is not as though I’ve anything to do with policy in the least, I don’t even believe in voting, so,” he sighed, “but to the point, I don’t know why you would actively seek that sort of company - teeny girls, I mean - because they are hell, I tell you, and you are miserable enough just in your factory setting.”

Teeny girls? Really? “By saying that Agnes is younger than myself I hardly went as so far as to imply -”

“Yeah, no – but you said she thinks she can ‘change’ you, and from everything else you had to say about her I’d say you are on to something there, and to me this is an indication that she is close enough to the romantic notions born of pop culture and propagated by an influx of enough hormones to make these seem possible that I don’t know man, I think you’re better off running from her the way you did the Cheese Danish. To that end,” John smirked, “was Agnes wearing a mask the whole time? Can you credibly verify that she doesn’t also have stink breath? Cause to just go back to the surface issues, you said she smokes, which is not only bad if you are considering Louis in this constellation, but also, probably increases the chances that such is the case.”

Again, he was probably right, but there was no point in admitting as much. When John was feeling particularly cruel and cutting there was very little point to engaging him at all, but Phillippe had not forgotten that his own offhand comments had invited this mood in before the morning light. He knew John was stressed – his time strained by family commitments and his wider circle of friends and that he likely was not receiving half of the thanks to which he entitled himself through acts that could be described as being of generosity. Phillippe considered his possible routs of retreating from further strife, only to arrive at the one he had come to hate treading – Brexit, to give the joke unto itself a pun of a name.

For whatever reason, John felt himself home on this road, and so Phillippe invited him to it. He had spent enough time talking about himself, anyway. “Can we back up to the part where you said you don’t believe in voting?” he asked, expecting something by way of Boris in response.

John nodded slowly. “Principle, ‘innit? You look back at most of history - at least here in Europe – and all of our state institutions, the economy, agriculture and infrastructure managed to function without any regard to the person or capabilities of an absolute monarch, because it doesn’t matter for shit whose face is on the coinage, normal people are going to do something that falls between what they want and what is required based on realities over which no mortal has any individual influence. We pretend it isn’t the same today because a bunch of radical leftists cut off a few heads two hundred or so years back or because nowadays right wing politicians like MLP have Twitter accounts and that is somehow the same kind of awful as the Committee of Public Safety, but it is all just because we don’t have religion letting us feel individually self-righteous the way it once did and having a ‘voice’ in government should not be what fills that void. Whoever fills a seat of power doesn’t actually influence the sorts of policies that have any bearing on the lives of average people and by participating in the system, I’d just be promoting all of the cottage industries to have popped up around the democratic concept and Mark fucking Zuckerberg doesn’t need any more money. Neither do any of the pundits or print journalist or podcasters who make this all seem so much more important than it is.”

It was not exactly what Phillippe had anticipated.

“And with that you make a decent argument as to why I’d rather the company of people who have yet to be disillusioned by disappointment,” he threw up his arms in surrender, however laughingly.

“I mean she went to uni for four years only to graduate into a series of economic recessions, I’m sure she and disappointment are well acquainted,” John countered, teasing with the tip of his tongue.

“Is that why you actively refuse to finish and degree programme?”

John shrugged. “Pretty much.”

“Okay, now that we’ve that cleared up,” Phillippe snorted, shifted. “John,” he swallowed, trying to regain a sense of earnest, “I wanted to um, apologise for some things that were said this morning, and to thank you for looking after Louis today, so I -”

“Oh, hell no, I’m not getting drunk with you man,” John dismissed before Phillippe could so much as produce the bottle of gin which he had spent thirty-five minutes picking out from his leather messenger bag. “Not after what you spent your day doing. I think my best bet for a night of entertainment would be to head over to Johanna’s - provided Richard and/or Mummy isn’t there,” he paused briefly to clarify, “and see if she’s been able to work her supposed engagement into some high-grade hash – be a shame if she hasn’t, crying shame - smoke a bowl with her and watch a bit of tonight’s debate over satellite when we’re wasted enough for such to seem logical.”

Perhaps he had underestimated just how _angry_ he was over the marriage plot or the sexism he saw as being inherent within it. It was difficult to take anything the youngest Plantagenet sibling said or did with any great degree of earnest, but on the off chance -

“John, I really did not think -” Phillippe began.

“No, I know you didn’t, but don’t you think that is the problem?”

“Maybe?” Phillippe offered.

Maybe?

He did not have time to think further on the matter, for the moment he began calling his own motives into the question John had repeatedly posed since his return, a knock came on the door, loud enough to interrupt any notion of reflection.

“That is my cue,” John announced, rising, and making his was to the door. “I’ll leave you to your gin and HelloFresh delivery and take my appetite and company – oh hell-o, hello” he shifted, taking a look through the peephole, turning back from the door with a particularly dark smile. “You know, on second thought, might just stay around and watch myself a bit of a romcom. I’m up for it.”

“You are kidding,” Phillippe rose with a panic, rushing as quietly as he could at pace to the door to find -as he had dreaded - Ingeborg frowning on the other side.

“No, not kidding,” John answered him in a whisper, “but I legitimately can’t wait to watch you stutter through and explanation of how you were.”

Could she not have simply called? There were restrictions of social contract being mandated by the (admittedly otherwise worthless) government at that. How irresponsible it was of her to show up unannounced! How awfully rude! What did this beast of a woman want with him? he wondered as his face reddened.

“If you are truly willing to stay, I’ll pay you,” Phillippe flustered, reaching for his wallet, continuing as he counted in a whisper, “… thirty-five Euros to tell her that I’m an asshole and that I lied, that this is _your_ home, not mine, that I -”

“Thirty-five Euros?” John snorted. It was all he had on him. It occurred to Phillippe that he should not have given quite so much out for the gin, though so much might have otherwise been clear in John’s rejection of it if not the entirety of their history that showed the Englishman to lack a palette for such finery. “How much change you have on you then?” his friend inquired mockingly.

“Um -”

“No, count it up, I want to know if this is worth the effort you ask of me.”

“Three Euros seventy-one,” Phillippe told him.

“So thirty-eight seventy-one, nearly forty quid in Brexit-pounds. Okay, hide yourself. We are doing this.”

“ _You are not going to invite her in_ ,” Phillippe hissed.

“Well, I’m not going to be rude, not for thirty-eight-seventy-one,” John responded with a shrug, allowing Ingeborg to continue knocking as she began to call Phillippe’s name. John, ignoring this, walked calmly the kitchen area, turned on the faucet and stuck his slightly too-long hair under the stream of running water he drew. What the devil was he playing at? Phillippe wondered. John gestured with his eyes to the pillow-fort on his way back to the door, allowing Phillippe a few short moments to settle in for what he hoped would not become a lengthy siege.

“Hello? Sorry, I was in the shower – I wasn’t expecting … wait, are you the new neighbour from 22C?” John asked awkwardly as he opened the door. “I’m so sorry. I knew I forgot something – I’ll get that basement key for you straight away. I’m John, by the way. Margaret, was it?”

Oh, Phillippe thought. This was refined. Part of him wished he could see Ingeborg’s expression as she offered her correction on the situation.

“Ingeborg, sorry, I’m not your new neighbour, I might have said so right off, um … I’m actually just looking for someone. I was given this address and -”

“Oh, okay – do you know the apartment number?” John offered, “I don’t pretend that I know everyone in the building, but I am happy to help where I can.”

“This is 22A, is it not?” Ingeborg seemed to demand.

“Last I checked,” John answered, sounding slightly uncomfortable.

Ingeborg softened her tone slightly. “Dose Phillippe Capet live here?” she inquired.

“Yeah, he – oh,” John paused as though run through with a blunt sword, unfortunate however anticipatable, “oh no. Those aren’t – those are flowers,” he assessed. Phillippe wondered if this be for his benefit or burden. “Fuck,” John seemed to speak to himself, “he has done it again. Ingeborg, was it?” he asked, shifting, “Why don’t you come inside? I’ll make you a drink. I really don’t think we should be having this conversation in a door frame and I’m sorry to be having it at all, if I’m to be honest.”

Had he studied drama at some point between falling short of multiple other degrees? Phillippe wondered.

“Why, has something happened?” Ingeborg worried.

“Take a seat, let me take your coat, I -”

“He hasn’t fallen ill, has he?”

“Fallen ill? How perfectly matched the two of you might otherwise be,” John laughed. “No, I assume he’s just gotten held up at the office.”

“Are you his roommate?” she asked.

“Not in so many words, no I’m – well, I’m his brother-in-law, so to speak. Sit down, Ingeborg. I’ll do my best to explain what I have every reason to suspect has happened here. First though, can I get you something to warm you up? Coffee? Something stronger?”

Brother-in-law? Phillippe hoped he had misheard, or that John, more at home in the English language than he was in French was simply trying to communicate ‘my mother was married to his father before either of us were born and we share two half-sisters’ than any sort of insinuation that he and Johanna were together –

though he would not put the latter past him, even for all of his objections in course. Bastard.

“No, I’m fine, I – I just don’t follow, I’m afraid. Phillippe isn’t married. I’ve seen his tax returns.”

Disconcerting as this was on its surface, Phillippe found himself rooting for the girl whom he had otherwise written off as gullible in offering up that retort. He made a mental note that the moment he was out of this foxhole (possibly even before punching John as hard as he trusted himself too without affording actual injury) he had ought to call Johanna and apologise, _sincerely_ at that, for misusing her name and for any effect this might have on her reputation or other relationships. He _did_ love her – albeit as a friend – and could infer from offhand comments that she was not altogether indifferent towards Adil, but she was not romantically interested, nor interested in romance - so much was clear and he should not have done anything to imply that she was anything but professional.

It was uncomfortable, at the very least, to be put in a fake relationship without a word of consent.

It was probably worse for women, too.

The way they all went on about what they considered equality to mean, Phillippe had to assume most things in fact were.

Yeah, he should probably say sorry for the inconvenience.

“Really, how?” John piped in with interest. Phillippe heard him take Ingeborg’s coat and hang it on his rack. He wondered if she looked in the mirror and saw the lipstick stain and love notes in removing it. He wondered it this gave her and cause to reconsider her assessments and what this might mean for him.

“Public access records,” she answered. “We went out once and – it is not polite to speak of, but the assets I have - I do that kind of research before meeting someone. It is perfectly legal -”

“Oh, I know,” John said, “but it is perfectly duplicitous all the same, and I’d applaud you in that respect if doing so did not simultaneously acknowledge the same double-nature inherent in our legal code: It is well fucked that I can’t poke a friend of a friend on Facebook due to EU Data Protection but one can poke around in the personal financial information of a perfect stranger if they are willing to sit around city hall for a few hours waiting on their number to get called.”

“Oh no – I wouldn’t put in the effort if it came at such an inconvenience,” Ingeborg moved to assure him, “you can do it online now.”

“Really?” John seemed to smile.

“Everything has been digitised in accordance with the Union’s ecological initiative,” she answered with more enthusiasm than anyone ought to have for anything to spring from Brussels.

“Phillippe isn’t married, at least on paper, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t committed. It is just … it is complicated,” John adjusted, seeming to have lost interest in the course he himself invited as he did. By then why would he not? Ingeborg had just suggested that she came from wealth and John was, in such incidences, terribly transparent. “If it serves any consolation, I think I myself may be in love with you,” – of course he was, Phillippe thought – “but to save you the trouble and stress of running a background and credit check should the attraction prove mutual, I don’t file myself so that my mother can continue to claim me as a dependent child. Technically,” John seemed to smirk, “it is not legal for her to do so, but I’m still a student and the rest of my siblings and their respective partners are likewise complete shits, and anyway – Phillippe, your Phillippe, well, Richard’s Phillippe,”- Richard? Phillippe felt himself choke – “had Stan, who is technically not my sister-in-law anymore, I should say, falsify a diagnosis on my behalf claiming that I’m not psychologically capable of providing for my own basic needs, giving my mother full legal power over me and -or so she has been lead to believe – granting her own children a large share of inheritance as I’ve effectively been written out, but ultimately the joke is on them because that is not Stan’s field of specialised medicine and as such she’s doesn’t have the qualifications to make such a claim, so I’ll just need an attest from an actual psychologist to get back into the courts good graces when wealth and property are up for grabs, and in the meantime I’ll just be hanging out, not paying taxes whilst my last living brother, my sisters, in-laws, and numerous nieces and nephews fight a running battle over a resource they’ve defined as limited by I don’t actually think exists – namely my mother’s love.”

What a load of bullshit.

How believable it all sounded.

It helped, of course, that John disguised the root lie with so many truths, though why he would admit to any of it was anyone’s guess and Phillippe might well have resented him a bit more for overselling his role in the whole inheritance charade had his place in the constellation not itself been so jarring -

Johanna he could accept as a fake-partner if it be a need’s must; she was gorgeous and graceful and good at commissioning sales of sport franchises to foreign despots, which made the lie believable on its own merits, at least if that had been the one John intended to tell.

But _Richard_? Richard, in stark contrast to his charming sister, was a _man_ , and even though the Pope had made a gesture of acceptance towards same-sex couples recently, Phillippe - born and raised Roman Catholic - could not help to think that the otherwise infallible old man was woefully mistaken in this liberal interpretation of scripture. He was as far from queer as they came, his perish priest had even assured him of such when he was a boy and such had been a legitimate worry of his. Phillippe Capet believed marriage to be a sacrament between a man and a woman, he had gone so far as to fall to his knees for the first time in his adult life upon learning that the Pontiff did not share his convictions, praying that the souls of those who greeted his Holiness’ play at politics as anything but.

Richard had kissed him, sure – maybe - but he had not returned it. He had said a full rosary to relieve him of the sin and still lost his hair in God’s wrath over the beauty he had once possessed inspiring such feelings in another of His creatures for whom such affections were not meant.

Phillippe hated himself for telling this story to his friends and had frankly forgotten his motivations in doing so.

He hated Richard for showing him affection in the worst moment of his adolescence and he hated John for buying into the story to the extent that he repeated it with such conviction – at least as much as he was able to sell someone on when he repeated the lie that he had suffered some form of emotional neglect in his adolescence –

But oh, there was a kind of genius to this, Phillippe considered as he continued to listen to John grossly flirt; he gave women an explanation that he would never be able to connect with them on any level they saw as significant and absolved them of any guilt or feelings of inadequacy they might otherwise be given to when his interests turned elsewhere.

Phillippe began to wonder if admitting that he had been born into a particularly religious family would be met with the same cuddling John’s Oedipal complaints often were if he were ever in a position to himself date again after this fiasco, but ultimately decided that rather than win sympathy (for women in the twenties and thirties were generally ambivalent to both God and their own mothers, but they had enough experience with the mother’s of sons that they hated all of the ones they might yet come to know with the same uniformity) acknowledging Catholicism in an introduction would put him in the category of a mid-nineties altar-boy with the accusations such entailed, which was an implication he did not want to be put in a position to defend and might in fact be as much of a sin as sodomy itself.

Anyway, Phillippe pouted, all of this was needless speculation. His friends seemed to have legitimately considered the possibility that he was queer and come to enough of a consensus on the matter that John, at least, felt perfectly comfortable framing his assertions around this confusion. Phillippe realised that if this went much further he would never be able to introduce another girl to them without concerns being voiced that he was not being true to himself, that if he was not happy he would never be able to make his partner happy and all of the other words without meaning that people said to make themselves feel less judgemental than they were –

and frankly, the only reason he had entertained the idea of a partner in the first place was because of their convictions. If he were a better man, at least, if he were a braver one, he would emerge and admit to Ingeborg that he was not in a relationship – straight or sinister, he would admit to John that he did not wish to be, kick them both out of his flat and return to his more regular paranoias – most of which could be seen to with pills and cleaning products.

“Maybe you should see a therapist well before surrendering all opportunities for closure to the passage of time,” Ingeborg told John, though Phillippe, quietly, cowardly understood that the same might be said of him.

“Nah – I’ve made my peace with it, and anyway, being in treatment would add credence to an argument I’ve no personal financial interest in allowing.”

“Well that _is_ duplicitous. I won’t applaud you, but I’ll raise a glass to your efforts if the offer still stands,” Ingeborg teased. 

“Naturally.” God! John made himself so easy to loath. What was he planning on getting out of this evening, aside, of course, form the ‘almost forty quid’ Phillippe which would never in his life pay, having been privy to how business was being conducted in his otherwise good name.

He heard John make his way to the open kitchen and Ingeborg move to follow. A waste a good alcohol, as far as he was concerned. John had no taste in wine of which to speak of, and Ingeborg was better off taking a slug of mouthwash than she was a shot of anything top shelf.

After a short while of the two being beyond earshot, Phillippe found these mild aggravations give way to anguish – what were they doing? Had Ingeborg since left? Had John followed without the benefit of a goodbye? And what was Louis so occupied with all the while? Just as Phillippe trusted his bad faith enough to want to emerge from his foxhole to confirm his suspicions for what they were, Ingeborg’s voice again filled the room and Phillippe froze in an uncomfortable crouch, afraid any further movement might serve his surrender if he had not already been discovered.

“You are a Plantagenet, then?”

“The hair didn’t confess me on its own merits?”

“Would my nodding prove insulting?”

“Hardly. I’d be happy to offer any aspect of my physicality as an outlet for your frustrations, be it simply calling me a ‘ging’ or taking this conversation to the bed of the man you came to meet.”

This was revolting.

“So, your brother has him in his pocket, then, does he?” Ingeborg asked after too long of a pause for Phillippe not to consider the silence having been filled by a kiss.

“I would dare to say not in an entirely dissimilar way to which your brother wanted to get him in his,” John countered with audible disgust, polite though he otherwise pretended, something that would have confirmed Phillippe’s worse suspicions if the inquiry unto itself had not found him so off guard.

“So, you know who I am then, too, I take it?” Ingeborg asked suggestively, though of what exactly Philippe could not say without a visual to contend. “Did Phillippe? I realise now that he didn’t ask all too many questions on our date and threw this up to his considerable ego, but it makes sense, so much of it makes sense when one considers …” she trailed off, clearly destressed.

“I don’t think he would have been so forthcoming if he did. With Phillippe its … complicated, by which I mean it is Catholic.”

Fuck you John, Phillippe thought. Fuck you and the whole of your name.

“Yeah he um, he’s been in love with my brother since the two shared a kiss on his sick bed when Phillippe was but a boy,” John explained, “but he can’t deal with the implications this entails for his mortal soul and … it is so insulting, just on every thinkable level, but whenever he and Richard spend a long weekend together as the Good Lord intends of them, he gets on some dating site or another trying to shock himself into heterosexuality, without a care of how hurtful this is to my brother or a third party, you in this case – at least if your intentions had been genuine.”

What was he on about? Ingeborg had clearly been keen – she had even stalked him to a coffee shop after he had posted on Instagram and later that same day to his flat upon coming on the address by way of the panic she inspired.

“I hate to admit that they were,” Ingeborg defended with a measure of shame. “I … I’m not a homewrecker, I’m not even, like I wouldn’t do something like what your sister has been accused of and sleep with an associate to further an agenda, mine or anyone else’s. I know who Phillippe was before I met him, of course, but he seemed so sweet when we talked, I could excuse the possible suggestion … and Canute knows nothing about this, I swear it.”

Who? Phillippe felt himself frowning.

“Uh … it is not really mine to suggest, but maybe he should?” John, in fact, suggested. “Phillippe misused you, and to that end he is misusing his office and in a just world there would be some fall out for these sins. This thing with Johanna, he is trying to discredit rumours that he is showing Richard’s firm any form of favouritism by making it impossible for himself to do so, and she is confident and capable enough to get out from under it, but she shouldn’t have too, and neither my dear, should you.

“Don’t mistake me for a moment, it isn’t that I don’t love my brother or that I’m waiting in the wings for him to fail,” – Bullshit! – “I’m really and truly not, but in this particular instance I find I can’t hold family loyalty over all of what is at stake. I’m as much an Englishman as I am French, and I don’t care who is granted this contract so long as trade isn’t interrupted more than it already has been by Brexit. Di Segni wants a circus, and for some reason Phillippe wants to instead give him a show trial, but shouldn’t he be the one facing charges?”

“Perhaps.”

“Ingeborg, Miss Estridsen, I would never want to put you in a position where you feel as though I’m forcing my politics or personal complaints upon you, but if you wanted to fight back for whatever your reasons, feminism or simply the fact that Phillippe ran screaming into the street when you tried to kiss him, I’d happily offer myself as an ally. You are deserving of so much better than the treatment you have been shown.”

Fuck, Phillippe thought. Canute Estriden was one of the plaintiffs in the case he had just ensured would go to trial, and now he had another corruption allegation he could level against European Commission for Construction, Building and Infrastructure, and at least three credible witnesses to give it credence. Even if such claims could not be proven, the mere suggestion would convince di Segni to reassign him to some less esteemed department – Transportation, or, heaven forbid, Agriculture.

John had been right, this was not an allegorical game of chess, this was high-stakes poker and he had shown his hand only to have it beaten.

“Thank you for your honesty, John. Do me a favour though and don’t tell Phillippe we had this little talk?”

“I wish I could make such a promise and have the personal honour to keep it. I will do my best but there is a strong chance I’ll shout abuses at him later tonight having learned that he’s continued leading you on in such gross fashion.”

“I best make myself scarce beforehand,” Ingeborg acknowledged.

“If I were to give you my address would you show up unannounced?” John inquired.

“If you give me your number and we don’t go back into another lockdown before this whole messy business of building contracts plays out, I’ll arrange to meet you somewhere where someone who actually knows how to mix a drink is present. I wouldn’t want to give a suggestion of collusion, not when you are already engaged in a complex scheme to screw several parties out of an inheritance you’ve worked so hard to give the impression of surrendering without a fight.”

“Right you are,” he agreed sheepishly.

“You deserve better, too, you know,” she told him after another disconcertingly long pause.

“I won’t say it means nothing to hear someone say that. Here, give me your phone, I’ll put my digits in.”

“Delete Phillippe while you are at it?”

“Done.”

Phillippe heard John walk Ingeborg to the door, help her into her jacket and exchange a few additional sweet (and somewhat threatening) goodbyes. He waited. He waited until John announced the coast was clear by removing the sheet that gave him cover with a jovial laugh.

“What the fuck?” Phillippe demanded.

“I know right,” John said as though nothing of significance had transpired, “terrible breath. I should have made her keep the mask on. So, about that forty quid -”

“John I’m not going to pay you now that -”

“This is why no one likes doing business with you. You asked me to get her off your back, I would venture it is a safe bet that she’s no longer interested in having your babies, so, regarding that processing fee -”

“As though any of that remains a concern! _You may well have ruined my career_.” He had won the last hand. How had things taken such a turn? How had he allowed them to?

“Don’t be so dramatic,” John dismissed. “You can’t be fired, I merely separated you from a sense of personal integrity you mistake others to view you as holding. I’d argue you did that to yourself this afternoon anyway, so I don’t see what the problem is, my playing from your own rule book to the potential profit of England. No – sorry, ‘profit’ is too strong – I merely worked against the detriment di Sengi wants to ensure, which you are willing to assist for reasons that make no economic sense for France in particular, but again you are not an elected official, you can’t be fired or otherwise face any fallout, so my criticism is here, perhaps, misplaced. Anyway, I best be off, go see if Johanna is holding up and if Adil, spurred by a love of your invention hocked her up with some gold, frankincense and myrrh from the Holy Land to take the edge off because liqueur is just not going to do it for me tonight. Oh, and uh – good luck at work tomorrow. Keep us posted on how things go, yeah?”

He had definitely underestimated how cross John was with him in all of this.

But then John underestimated his anger, too.


	5. Damnation and Indifference

The days passed into weeks and, in such time, local parliament had managed to pass emergency legislation of the sort that temporarily allowed Phillippe Capet to consider the conundrums surrounding his personal life such as it was to have belonged to a brief moment in the past. A date for the hearing had been set for early November, and with this in place he had very little reason to go into his office - even less so when measures meant to flatten the curve again closed his local café and with it, the prospect of conversing with Agnes.

She had not been there the following morning.

The day after that, Phillippe had concluded that he stood a better chance at avoiding his direct superior from the safety of his own quarters, and by the weekend the national government had decided that in the interest of public health it was better to close the places where people might gather in an imitation of life.

Though he had long held the belief that the tripartite system of electoral government merely served as a public front for the larger bureaucratic apparatus, itself serving no civic or social function, Phillippe found himself attributing the sudden deficiencies in his life to lockdown for the first few days if its implementation. He entertained vague concerns about the economy, shared a few memes around the perceived scarcity of toilet tissue, and shifted some of the blame for the void his life had become to local leaders whose name’s he had not bothered himself to know a week prior.

Paris was dead. Despite this, Covid-19 continued to spread, and for the first time since the initial outbreak, Phillippe truly began to internalise the strain of social distance, longing for the mundane interactions he had been so willing to sacrifice or set aside in the pursuit of minor professional gains rather than day dreaming about unrealistic situations involving opportunities that had long passed him by.

Since John had left his flat upon promising his downfall, the weeks passed in silence - save for a number of professional concerns that treated too closely assumed experiences he had all but confessed – accumulating in missed calls from people he had no intention of explaining himself to, and only the most limited interactions with those whom he did.

None of his friends had logged into their weekly Dungeons and Dragons table.

John seemed to be hitting ignore whenever he rang. That, or he had his number blocked. Phillippe always had a difficulty gauging how much effort John was willing to extend to any petty strife.

When he sent an apology to Johanna over WhatsApp (borrowing from a goodly number of her younger brother’s critiques), she, electing not to assign words to a situation for which there might not be any worth her energy or offer, responded merely with a picture of what appeared to be a very experience watch (albeit one designed for a man), captioned with emoji of a girl shrugging, the Tricolour and a series of phallic shaped vegetables (which Phillippe hoped in vain was her way of telling him that she wanted to make ratatouille but did not trust herself to try to spell it.)

Constance, on the other hand, wrote him an email a few days after John’s slightly flirtatious propositions had become formal corruption allegations when they left his couch, suggesting to Phillippe (in a way that showed she had long since cast her verdict in his opposition) that his anger and isolation predated the outbreak. She implored him to at least speak to Richard if Ingeborg were unwilling to renege her accusations of cabal, which to Phillippe’s mind would only give credence to the corruption charges being laid against him –

and then, perhaps that was the goal. He could not imagine where else any of this was coming from.

Perhaps, it was impossible not to allegorically take work home during the actual, acute reality of home office.

Or perhaps, he considered with some degree of reason, little Kamil had hit upon a certain truth in asserting his curious superstitions - perhaps Johanna was a creature of chaos and he had invited a world of trouble upon himself simply by evoking her name in conversation. Maybe he had instead been cursed by the same angles and saints that existed in his tormented mental congruity of scripture and social awkwardness for the sin of suggesting a literal marriage of convenience at a urinal while holding his dick (consciously comparing it to Richard’s.)

He had no support from within his department – not that he could expect to call on such for di Segni had gotten exactly what he wanted from the hearing well before it began; the contract would presumably not go to a firm headquartered in London and, even if it should, construction would be delayed until well after regulations went into place that would work against its completion. Where one might be quick to accuse the commissioner of a Machiavellian attitude towards achieving his desired outcome, man’s sense of Christian morality (the very same, Phillippe freely acknowledged, that he had intended to himself prey upon with his ploy) was creating an obstacle in allowing him to continue in his current position -

At present, water cooler conversation occurring over WhatsApp seemed to circle the assumption that Phillippe was in a torrid, tortured affair with Richard Plantagenet which had seen the latter into various highly profitable contracts at the expense of his competitors.

Phillippe had gotten them caught by greedily employing the same emotional tactics that had found in in his alleged lover’s sheets to commit a complicated act of espionage against other firm, similar proposals in order to help Richard gain the edge cost-wise.

It was a convincing argument, especially when the facts were even less straight-forward.

In truth, Richard’s business model was successful because he always added ten percent to current estimated cost as was done in London, allowing for inflation and delays to come and go as they pleased without affecting his bottom line, allowing him to finish his projects to completion without appearing to go over-budget.

The problem, of course, was that Richard could no more admit to this without seeing his model copied into his potential ruin than Phillippe could confess that he knew the contractor to be a man of about as much honour as was present in the profession without tarnishing his own name and that of the department –

a department that was at present trying to reassign him on grounds that did not appear to conflict the anti-discrimination clauses of national and European employment law.

Di Segni hated homosexuality the same as he hated women, Muslims, minorities, and the politicians who shared his general alignment but with a nationalistic bend. It did not particularly matter that Phillippe was none of these things, the allegation in itself was affiliation enough for the commissioner to try to quietly remove him from his seat. Departmental shifts were common enough that Phillippe was certain he was on course for a shake up as soon as speculations had died down.

Of course, there was some irony in that the demotion was well deserved. His plan had backfired, spectacularly at that.

In fact, Phillippe was tempted to think that his own designs on eliminating Richard from contention presently served the only argument working to uphold the singed contract as it stood and keep it within a reasonable timeline for completion. Richard simply knew how to work a room. The man was personable to the extreme as Phillippe had recently (resentfully) come to rediscover; and Richard managed as such to get on famously with Johanna’s “intended” - possibly to the detriment of countless individuals, or rather, individuals who only counted insofar as statistics were printed and understood; though certainly to the financial benefit of his extended family -

Phillippe did not know what had been said between John and Johanna the night the former had brought Ingeborg on ruinous designs, he did not know what Johanna said to Adil, Adil to those processing the means of production or to the rival factions funded by them, what any of them said to Richard or, quite frankly, the timeline as it unfolded, but he had a very clear idea of what Richard meant to say to di Segni in court and he fully hoped his name would stay out of it. Without a bridge between England and the rest of Europe, maritime trade, and the crude oil on which it was carried would come to serve the commercial sector in an increased capacity. This, in and of itself, was logical, but what di Segni likely was not considering in any significant way was that the projected carbon admissions would put Europe in contention with the Paris Accord and in open conflict with those benefiting from surplus, namely, Islamic extremist groups be it either in another wave of necessitated mass migration at a time when the economy truly could not absorb the human costs, or in increased violence in Union itself, expediting its collapse with citizens looking to the growing right for protection from a threat falsely perceived as more present. The Commission’s only option to spare the streets form civil unrest, or so Richard planned to argue, would be to approve an infrastructure proposal, one only his firm was fully ready to fulfil.

The numbers spoke in Richard’s favour, at least.

Phillippe, for his part, could not find anything to contradict them after this had come in conversation that he wished he had done better to avoid.

After Constance’s intrusive encouragement leading him to the notion that he had ought to sort this out for his own sake – professionally and personally - he had answered an incoming call to all the words that, had he been the one to speak them at any point to a certain someone else he did not particularly see a future with, might have saved him from a number of head- and heartaches.

Richard had proven himself a perfect gentleman in this regard, giving his recollection of events in a way that did not diminish or devalue presumed Phillippe’s feelings while at once making it clear that these were not shared. He apologised for having evidently been intrusive, for seeming to encourage affections he had not been aware of, stating finally that he hoped if they could not one day be friends that they might continue on friendly terms as clearly Phillippe meant a great deal to his younger siblings, who in turn meant a great deal to him.

Phillippe had been livid at every insinuation against which he was faced. He had been livid that the words he struggled to formulate in respect to Ingeborg rolled so easily from Richard’s tongue in his regard. He had never been in love with him, and he had been livid that Richard was so vain as to have fallen for his brother’s lie when spoken through a scorned woman’s lips.

Ultimately, what angered him the most, was the realisation within Richard’s gentle rejection. It occurred to Phillippe that if he was emotionally ready to commit in any sense to another, he wished himself a partner who afforded him the benefit of trying to understand him as Richard had gone to great lengths to do – for this was something Phillippe found he lately lacked from his friends and colleagues, from the church he had since stopped attending as he did not know how to confess his sins since the seated Pope showed inclinations towards mercy that opposed the teachings which he had never otherwise been given reason to question.

Was it a sin to over-sell a small gesture of concern, or was he instead facing damnation in supressed longing for a show of warmth (whatever its form) in a world that otherwise seemed so callously indifferent to him?

Di Segni would see him excommunicated if it could for the mere suggestion, regardless if he found grounds to afford it merit in its own right. It was enough that the competence of others had forced him into what could be deemed corruption, regardless of the unglamorous specifics or the narrative glimmer of counter claims.

Confronted with unintended consequence, Phillippe felt as though he hardly knew his own heart. He was lonely, but compromised as he had let himself become, he had little left to bargain. He had never before been confronted with a submission he could not defeat with a subclause. He understood paperwork far better than he did people and struggled to fathom what had convinced him to try his hand at public relations. He had become the centre of allegations. He had become a liability.

Yet hoping to convince his department otherwise, he told Richard that he would not – could not – help him in his schemes when the offer of a way out was put to him, suggesting that the motives of the affiliates Richard had found in the scheme he had been forced into might not be such that he would otherwise want to help further. Olive branch though he had intended it, this statement (the only true one he had himself given in recent memory) led to an argument that seemed to extend that over which he and the would-be-contractor spoke.

When Phillippe wrote back to Constance later that same night to let her know that he had taken her advice and spoken to her former brother-in-law (whose construction firm she held a not altogether insignificant share in) she had not bothered herself to respond. Whatever. Phillipe would not have much cared for the psychological assessments of someone whose only claim to being able to offer one was having attended an eight-hour weekend seminar on bedside manner several years past, but the question of whether or not he still had friends at all to speak of (or to) was starting to cause him great concern. Surely, if anyone knew John to be a liar, it was Constance! Surely, she had sat through enough Christmas dinners with the Plantagenets to know them to be corrupt to the last and cunning enough to twist this detriment into celebratory toasts if it was not to be denied. They regularly mixed business and pleasure, letting suffer anyone who gave the suggestion of the same. If anyone should take his side in this manufactured conflict, he reasoned it should be her -

but in Constance’s silence, he had his answer to where he stood.

Two weeks had since passed.

There was nothing else to say of the days since contained.

Everything was as bleak as it had long been, only now the autumn clouds carried with them the promise of consequence Phillippe no longer felt equipped to control, following the patterns of life during a pandemic, finding that they now failed to form anything continuous or cohesive. He busied himself with home office, with the news cycle, with the time parents spoke of whishing they had to spend with their children without any weight of obligation behind it.

He had helped Louis to build a fort in his bedroom after the boy had fallen into tears upon seeing that the one he had assembled with John had been demolished in the siege had had happily missed, colouring a picture he meant to give the first stranger he had seen in months with all of the gratitude he did not yet have the vocabulary to voice. Instead, he screamed, cried, threw himself on the floor, reacting violently when Phillippe tried to calm him until his sobs turned into heaves and he began coughing for his inhaler.

Louis spent the next day in bed, and Phillippe, guilt stricken, built a canopy around it, which the two since decorated with fairy lights and photographs of all of the people Louis said he missed in lockdown.

Phillippe missed them, too.

The fort helped, and it did not, but then infrastructure had its limitations – Phillippe, if anyone, should know, he was the cause for most of them, back when the world used to otherwise work.

What would have helped both of them more than tiny lights and threadbare linens, Phillippe thought, was a bit of perspective on how to help his son make sense of the void that had become their lives, for he knew he was himself struggling with the same, the only difference was that he had long resigned himself to being lonely; in retrospect, he had even courted the state.

When at last all had transitioned from shock to standard, when he stopped reaching out to his friends in vain, recording voice messages for them he had no reason to suspect would ever be played, his phone rang. His heart stopped before speeding with expectation and anxiety -

Agnes, blessed Agnes of the coffee house and Covid-humour, would text him with an address that same evening. She expected him to show up. She expected to be ‘entertained’ and ‘astonished’ –

At least, she had chosen to phrase it as such.

Philippe did not know exactly what she expected - especially if he were meant to provide it - for even without the restrictions on meeting and movement, spontaneity was not a trait that he particularly possessed.

Faced with this conundrum, Phillippe Capet did what any awkward, anxious adult man might and rang his mother, declining to give her enough detail around which to form the grounds of disapproval as he asked her if she would mind coming over to mind Louis for the day at the cost of the regular accusations that masked themselves as conversation upon her arrival (Was he getting enough sleep? Drinking enough water? Had he called his sister? Was he growing a beard by intention, or had he forgotten to shave? He wasn’t breaking out again – was he? Was he _sure_ he was drinking enough water?)

When he had finished appeasing her want for connection with a series of nods and murmurs, Phillippe went out to buy a paper, hoping to find an exhibit of anything that might strike Agnes’ fancy being advertised, but to no avail. What was the point? He did not have much an idea as to her interests and he knew for certain that most people did not much find him interesting. The best he could likely manage without notice would be taking her on a private tour of a government building outside of visitation hours, but unless she needed to renew her driving licence she would likely have very little want of any of the places most kids groaned about having to visit on class trips when the other options was a double hour in a core requirement course. She certainly had better things to do on a Saturday night, on her birthday at that – but how he ever managed to plan into this was anyone’s guess. Personally, the more Phillippe thought on it, the more questions he came on. (Should he shave? If he did, would she notice he had the odd sport or two from the crisps that re-entered his diet when boredom began to verge into depression as it did? What would she be wearing and what should he? Should he buy her a gift, or would that be to forward? Were flowers presumptive? Was Agnes?)

For a while, Phillippe spent the late morning walking the streets of Paris in the company of his own mind without purpose until he gleaned disapproval from the glances of the people he passed with canvas totes filled with basic necessities. Wanting to blend in as much as he might, he went into Monoprix without much of a plan only to find himself spend the better half of a quarter-hour standing in front of the very last of all perspective purchase he would have ever wanted to be found whilst considering.

“Are you buying gummies? Can you give me a box, too?” Arthur Plantagenet greeted him. Constance’s youngest was six months Louis’ senior but the summer that separated them put their difference to a year on the school calendar. The boys were friends in the sense that their parents were themselves - they saw one another at assorted get togethers, played well but probably would not have sought one another’s company on the school yard were such an option, something Phillippe observed at birthday parties when other children were abound. Arthur liked informing Louis about the things kids did when they were ‘big’ (having a year of his primary education behind him) which often involved words Phillippe would have preferred his son not to have been exposed to, and misunderstandings that led his boy to making mistakes that would not otherwise have crossed his mind. Philippe looked at the box of rubbers, at his friend’s son, and considered how he might explain the truth of the matter to his own boy, assuming that he might well have sooner than he would like to if he botched this into something Arthur found worth repeating to others as a matter-of-fact.

Phillippe had first learnt about intercourse through an accusation that his elder sister Margaret was having it. His father called the boy’s parents, the perish priest, and a takeaway service and the all sat down in the living room as though they were intending to watch the Euros, when the adults began talking about sin as though it were a Sunday, and Phillippe, eight years old and fully lost to the wider construct asked what sex was only to be told that sometimes boys stuck their penises into girl’s vaginas, which he instantly decided was the most revolting thing he had ever heard, resulting in him screaming ‘ _Why would you do that?_ ’ with the fire and brimstone that suddenly failed the rest of the conversation as his parents fell into the standard line of _‘When two people truly love one another …’_ and Father Suger amended ‘ _And are united in the Holy Sacrament of marriage._ ’

It had been too much for young Phillippe, he stormed out of the room shortly after Alys fell into uncontrolled laughter and Margaret began shouting that he was more embarrassing than even Mom and Dad. He would not look anyone’s parents in the eyes for a solid month (having learned where babies, in fact, came from and holding all of them to account) and still had an aversion to pizza, which fortunately he had not yet had to explain in his adult life, otherwise food snob that he was.

He did not want the same for Arthur, who had every right to discover sex in the normal way of drinking a fifth of vodka and finally feel the courage to tell a crush how he felt at someone else’s party ten years on; who, at this point, clearly though he was buying bonbons.

He was already fighting with Constance. He did not need her to break her silence only to tell him off again.

“Oh – ‘Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!’” the boy explained excitedly, explaining, “That is what they say in movies and then adults give out sweets. In the movies. Aunt Johanna says it works in the US and the UK but we can’t do it here because people are home because they have _Co-ro-na_ ,” he whispered slowly as though he worried about frightening passers-by, “but they always have candies and chocolates at the supermarket so we can get some here, but Ellie and Alix won’t help me and Aunt Johanna is busy, and I know it is important adult stuff because she is on her phone and she likes to scare people by talking to them in Arabic, because it sounds like she is coughing and they think she has _Co-ro-na_ ,” he surmised, again whispering the name of the infection as though he believed it to be a naughty-word, “but it is not a problem, I think, because she is not really sick, it just sounds that way when she makes ‘hhh!’ ‘hhh!’” Arthur continued rambled. It seemed to Phillippe as though the boy had already had well enough sugar for the day. “Where is Louis? Are you guys trick or treating, too?”

“No … Louis is at home with his grandmother. Where is your mum?”

“At home. With _my_ grandmother,” Arthur paused, shifting his tone and his feet. “Is Louis sick?”

“No,” Phillippe explained, “I just don’t want to put him at risk. That is why he has to stay home. When it sounds like he is coughing –‘hhh!’-‘hhh! -,” he mimicked from the boy’s own repertoire, “he really is, and he already coughs quite a lot without being exposed to contagions,” he attempted with as much humour as he could manage watching painfully as Arthur fell into a pout.

“Does he not have a mask?” he asked. “I have another, he can have it if he doesn’t. Um … actually, that one is my favourite, the one I have at home. He can have this one … if you help me reach the bonbons,” the six-year-old began to negotiate. “Then he can come over and we can play again. And eat candy!” 

“This? Um … no, this is not for children,” Phillippe answered awkwardly of the box of condoms deceptively packaged with pieces of fruit denoting their flavours.

“But it is Halloween,” Arthur whined, “and Aunt Johanna said we could have anything we wanted as long as we were good, and why is everything for adults-only?” he seemed to cast blame. “When _I’m_ old enough to make rules for everyone, I won’t be mean to kids and close the parks.” Arthur crossed his arms. Phillippe bit his lip. Half of adult life was hoping that things would be cancelled, most of childhood was worrying that not enough was happening. He felt terrible when he looked at his friend’s son, not able to offering anything that would alleviate the acute anxiety under which the whole world suffered, not to someone who stood to suffer so much in the long run. He himself had a rather light time of it, he had a job that existed outside of the ebbs and flows of the commercial economy and did not exactly mind hanging out in his flat in pyjama bottoms, but this was only because he had lived enough to have learned his limitations; Louis and Arthur and all of their peers were being raised without ever properly being able to discover disappointment when hope seemed so far from grasp. Arthur, if every in the position to do so, likely would not close the parks if put into the same situation – if things continued as they were for much longer, he would never have a proper childhood to mould him into a responsible adult. He would not have the schooling or social skills to consider and weight consequence.

“You and Louis, both,” Phillippe said, kneeling down to meet the boy face to face, tapping the boy’s chin for him to hold it up.

“Yeah but … we can play at home if we are both wearing masks, right?” Arthur asked hopefully.

Phillippe bit his lip again, grateful that his own mask went some ways to cover his guilt. “He has trouble breathing, it is not an option for him.”

“I can maybe wear two,” Arthur suggested. “I have two. That I could wear.”

“Maybe we could set something up over Zoom instead?”

“What, like school?” Arthur asked, disappointed with but unwilling to fully reject the offer. It both warmed and broke Phillippe’s heart seeing that his son was so missed. He felt responsible for Louis’ latest attack and felt the task of protecting him to be well outside of his skills as a person or parent, and worried that a video conference would only make things worse by reminding him of all of the limitations that did not seem to otherwise factor into his consideration. He could see Arthur, but they could not play in any way that they could recognise as such. He was not allowed outside at all, Arthur would have stories of what it was like to run errands – stories that should not become narratives in their own right until one was old enough to have an hour lunch break in which to negotiate all that needed accomplishing. Maybe, Phillippe thought, he ought to have taken his son with him to the shops, but then, he had not planned on coming himself. Maybe he should call Constance about getting the boys together and sitting down themselves over a bottle of wine and whatever grievance she felt like voicing a glass or two in. He did not know if it would hurt or help, but he found himself smiling slightly at the notion.

“We will make it more fun than that, I promise,” he said, squeezing Arthur encouragingly on the shoulder, hoping to lift his sprits a bit. Arthur looked past him as though momentarily made unconscious of his physical presence.

“Oh, this looks suspect,” Johanna Plantagenet said in lieu of greeting. There was nothing particularly taunting about her tone itself, but (though no particular fault of her own, he supposed) she was a beautiful woman with a bit of wit which caused everything she said to cut like a blade so sharp one saw blood before registering its pull. She was right, of course, there was something deeply disconcerting about an adult man holding a box of condoms in one hand and a young child in the other.

“Aunt Johanna!” Arthur quite nearly screamed, “Eleanor and Alix are being mean to me!”

“Then go do something to properly warrant their embarrassment and ire,” Johanna suggested with a wink. “Phillippe,” she shook her head, “stand up, stop talking to a grade schooler in a way that could get you arrested. Or is that the goal – trying to show yourself to be as much a man of the cloth as the commissioner trying to oust you from office? Do us a favour though and leave my family out of this one.”

“This isn’t remotely what you think you have just walked in on,” Phillippe said as he stood, quickly, feeling the strain in his knees as he shook to collect himself.

“Oh, no - what is this? What is this? Magnum,” Johanna read from the box as she took it from his hand. “I know it has been a while for you, Phillippe, but if you buy them too large, the rubbing motion creates an uncomfortable friction which can lead to irritation, and Constance, as you know, is in no condition to look at your right now. Especially after my finding you looking at her son as you just were, you sick fuck.”

“Um, they are not for me. And this – I wasn’t … Louis can’t visit with friends and I was just -”

“What are the rumours to be believed?” she asked, her eyes growing playful but her tone remaining tactically dry in typically British fashion. “Were they for my brother then? Well …. that is information about him I could have happily gone to the grave without ever having learned. Things going well then, I take it?” she mocked.

“No, everything is shit,” Phillippe whispered into her ear with a hiss. “And everything you have heard is a straight up lie.”

“Well, as I’ve been informed lately by virtue of not being so physically endowed, cock tends to fix most problems men invent, so good luck with whatever you’ve planned. Atty, darling,” she shifted, almost sweetly, “where are your sisters? We have to get a move on soon.”

“Can you buy sweets for Louis too?” Arthur pleaded. “And help me reach the chocolate? He can’t go trick-or-treating because his father thinks it will make him sick.”

“Go find your sisters and tell them that if they don’t help you get to what you are after, the deal is off. I’m not buying any of you anything if you can’t be nice to one another. I’ll be there in a minute; I just want to catch up with Louis’ dad right quick.”

“Okay, but -”

“Arthur,” she said. Phillippe raised his brow. Johanna had never had any interest in being a mother, but she had managed to nail the essentials of parenthood in two syllables. The boy should be grateful he did not have a middle name.

“Fine, okay,” Arthur relented. “But, Mr Capet, tell Louis I said ‘hi’, okay? And That I miss him and hope he feels better soon.”

“Will do,” Phillippe nodded. Suddenly, and to his great surprise he felt Johanna’s hand on his forearm.

“Wait – Louis is not sick, is he?” she asked in a whisper.

“He has asthma,” Phillippe shrugged, feeling awkward in inadvertently having created another situation that could so easily be given to misinterpretation, and in such short order at that.

“Oh, thank God,” Johanna breathed a sigh of relief. “Not that … I’m just glad -”

“No, no, I know what you mean. He had an attack though about two weeks back, so I’ve been … the worst version of myself. Probably.”

“Shit, I had no idea. Is he okay? Are you?”

“I mean, I think it is my fault, on some level. I think he is just stressed from being inside for so long.”

“No unlike yourself?” Why did women do this?

“I’ll be alright,” Phillippe assured her.

Johanna looked at him enquiringly for a moment, gave a small nod and said, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” as she returned the flavoured Magnums to the shelf. He did not know if it was worse that she did not bother herself to laugh at him outright.


	6. Alliteration and Cocaine

Johanna Plantagenet looked far too lovely to simply be shopping for groceries, which was unsurprising in itself in that she never, to Phillippe’s knowledge, bothered herself to cook, and eating had never held much interest for her, either. At dinner she made a show of moving her food around her plate as she spoke, a gesture to her host that their efforts were not going altogether ignored if not directly engaged which Johanna seemed to consider polite. Her figure offered a suggestion that this behaviour owed itself to illness, but Phillippe had known her long enough to blame politics rather than psychology for his friend’s seeming indifference to her own physical needs. One in university they had shared a taxi on the way home from a party and she, to his embarrassment, asked the driver to circle through a McDrive as it suddenly occurred to her that she was famished and she had nothing in her mini-fridge aside from a bottle of water and some face cream that was meant to reduce the circles he had never otherwise noticed under her eyes. When he asked her about this, she brushed him off with an offer of ‘ _Oh, do you want anything?_ ’ and when he clarified that he had enough hors-d'œuvres to satisfy him, she explained that she had not given any consideration to partaking because the hosts were more his friends than hers, and as the daughter of a cabinet member she had been cautioned against accepting food from the public since memory allowed. Phillippe told her point-blank that someone would have to know her personally to have any want to poison her, to which Johanna simply shrugged that merely opening a newspaper should suffice – as nothing was personal when one’s father determined tax policy.

It struck him even still that she had said this as casually as she had ordered her takeaway, and he wondered if she truly believed that there was nothing inherently personal in politics as her comments to him clearly crossed that line.

“I hate that you have seen me naked,” he told her, looking down at the rubbers he had been handed. What Phillippe actually hated was that a decade before he had been a great deal fitter than he now was and Johanna still had not been impressed with him, which did not bode well for him and Agnes or anyone else for that matter. A flash of memory of her being naked in his arms shot through him with all of the particulars of that night in Messina, particulars not relating to the act itself, which had the effect of returning him fully to the present. Johanna, in her curious get up, was not dressed for Monoprix and was not confused as to what average people who bothered themselves with nourishment wore when buying milk and bread.

It was her birthday and, as with every year, she was hosting a costumed ball. This year’s theme was ‘The Roaring Twenties’ as ‘thirty’ came at some psychological cost to women that Phillippe, who had spent the roll over into this third decade without affording it much notice, did not particularly understand.

How could he have forgotten?

When Johanna had announced as much months before, he and John had planned to attend in mockery as Mexican revolutionaries and had even gone so far as to order ponchos and fake moustaches off of Amazon to clash with the flapper dresses and flat caps otherwise associated with the era. He wondered if the party was still scheduled, if catering had been cancelled and if Johanna was arranging her own refreshments for the first time in her thirty years, if the charity she was asking for donations for in lieu of gifts was the one for retired horses Kamil Ayyub had discussed with some dismay, and if the party, in and of itself, was still occurring at all under lockdown – more Spanish Flu than Années Folles.

Certainly, he was no longer invited. Not that he could much blame the hostess her retraction.

“Oh shit. It is your birthday, too, oh my God – that explains the get up,” Phillippe stammered. “Happy Birthday. You look gorgeous, as ever, Johanna, very twenties, very on point, on pun -”

“Well, the party is cancelled but that is no reason to let vintage go to waste,” she dismissed, squinting slightly, “and what do you mean, ‘too’? John and I are not actually twins – you’ve always known that, right?”

He had nearly forgotten it if he was to be honest. When Johanna turned sixteen a year before her brother, she brough him with her to bars, presented her ID and let John, who naturally only had his school one on him - explain that they were twins, a lie most were given to accept being that they looked so similar and shared a given name, Johanna consenting to all of this under the logic of double standards. Her father would kill her for being out so later on a school night, but John was indulged in everything he fancied, so as long as she brought him she could just as well walk in through the front door, wash the makeup off her face and change into her school uniform before joining her father for breakfast as though she had not broken curfew. This had all been far too daring for Phillippe, who more usually than not went home after one or two drinks coincided with his being humiliated at a game of darts. He wondered if Johanna remembered that detail of being sixteen half a lifetime later.

“No, I – well there is this girl -” he attempted, looking again at the contraceptives, and fretting the faux pas sure to follow an explanation he did not even feel comfortable with himself. Did Agnes even want to have sex with him? Was it to presumptive to even plan for that eventuality – even if he did not truly consider that it would be tonight? How could there be a second, third date if he could not even come up with a plan for their first in the whole of the two and a half weeks in which he had opportunity for consideration? Johanna would likely have an idea as to what he had ought to do for she was good at finding trouble without apology which seemed to be what Agnes wanted from a partner, but Phillippe knew he simply could not ask – not directly anyway; not after making plans for Johanna’s romantic existence without her knowledge or consent.

“That explains so much,” she seemed to tease. Christ! How he hated the masks they wore! What he would not give to instead be able to see the one she intended to present!

“It doesn’t, she wasn’t - I mean,” he choked, “I met her in a coffee shop, and I well … you know how we were meant to give our contact information to track the outbreak? I ended up giving mine to Ingeborg – of the Cheese Danish -”

“I’m very much aware of who Ingeborg Estriden is, Phillippe. I do now, anyway,” she told him flatly. Phillippe knew he was not going to get far.

“Right, I – I suppose you would be … did John, did he,” he paused, mouthing ‘f-u-c-k’ for the sake of habit, “her?”

“What?” Johanna snorted, suddenly unable to disguise her humours behind a practiced exterior. “No! Why? Are you trying to? Is that what this is about?” she laughed, gesturing at his perspective purchase.

“No! No, its … I ended up having to go back to the café because I had not given my contacts that morning when I had been asked to. We had a conversation, she, Agnes, the girl I now mean to take out, uh – in the morning there was some confusion and I thought she was flirting when she asked for my information, but then I somehow ended up convincing her that I was funny, I suppose, and she told me she would text me on her birthday, that she wanted to do something dangerous and impulsive to celebrate another milestone of adulthood -”

“‘Milestone of Adulthood’,” Johanna repeated, “that’s vague.” Phillippe had intended it to be. “We talking ‘driving licence’, ‘grad school’, or ‘gainful employment’?”

“None of the above. She graduated last year with a degree in archaeology and is about to be kicked off of her parent’s medical insurance during a pandemic.”

“Oh,” Johanna nodded as she picked up the narrative, “and because she worked in gastronomy she has also just lost her only source of income so the milestone you refence is ‘I’m at a stage where I’m willing to settle.’ I feel it,” she gave. “That sort of scans. Feel bad for both of you though, there is nothing worse than getting through a series of banal conversations pretending to be far cooler than either of you are in hopes that the obligatory sex to follow won’t feel half so hallow as the rest of life seems.”

“What would you suggest I do?”

“Well,” Johanna frowned, “I mean, not that. Just own or rather own up to the list items you would never admit to online, the cheesy pop songs you have on your playlists, that fact that you’ve watched so many Disney movies with Louis that you have a favourite Princess-”

“Belle,” Phillippe confirmed.

“You basic fucking bitch.”

“Who is yours then?”

“Jasmine,” she said dryly. This, as Phillippe saw it, had probably always been true given that Johanna just had a ‘tigers on a gold leash’ air about her when acting like royalty, she wanted to see the world and was not particularly interested in marrying or being told to do so –

especially not by him, and probably especially not to a faux-Arab Prince who manged to outwit her in her own extended con. Phillippe suspected that he could not set this right, but that it was no unreasonable for him to say sorry for his hand in the whole affair.

“Johanna, I really think we need to talk -”

“See this is what I mean,” she interrupted, refusing to acknowledge the situation he had created between them, “you can find your way into circular arguments of no significance that will allow you both to avoid the larger truth of the situation – that she is a penniless working girl and you are a slightly older, reasonably well-off government employee out to exploit her personally now that you can no longer do so on her tax revenue.”

“That is not -”

“It is like the plot of most made-for-TV-movies. At least when things end badly as I am sure they will you’ll be able to console yourself with a microwave dinner and a Netflix binge. I, on the other hand, well as I’m sure you have heard by now I’ll have to settle for watching sport as I’m about to again be in the procession of a franchise – and Phillippe,” she shifted with a dramatic inhale, crossing her arms before her chest, “I’m particularly cross at you in this regard if I am to be honest, because … because did you _know_ how much football there is? It is like every bloody night of the week now and I don’t know how I’m meant to stand it.” Phillippe blinked. He knew his friend hated sport, but he had trouble with the idea that she had only just heard of the UEFA - and Champions Leagues to which she was likely alluding.

He also knew that there were much bigger arguments than the ones she anticipated over the remote. Was she truly considering giving Adil Ayyub her hand? Was she not being given much of a choice in the matter?

“Johanna, I’ve wanted to apologise to you for my role in arranging this … misunderstanding of sorts for quite some time. Not here, obviously at eleven in the morning at an overpriced grocer standing in front of a display of contraceptives with the accusation that I have a small penis, that I plan to take advantage of a girl that I don’t even know if I want to take out tonight, that I’m more or less a loser – which I mean,” he adjusted as she raised an eyebrow in interest, “certainly I am, at least in how I’ve managed to fuck up being a friend to you of late and I understand your anger and outrage -”

“What anger and outrage? My dude, I’m just having a go at you,” Johanna began to laugh, relaxing her posture. Phillippe’s own stiffened.

“It was never my intention to establish a precedent for attributing all of your accomplishments to your sexuality, physicality or whatever may be the case,” he said.

Johanna looked at him blankly for a moment. “Um. Oooh. Don’t know quite how to say this but you didn’t, buddy. I did rather when I got my boobs and butt done at eighteen - for myself mind, and not the male gaze or however one is meant to phrase it. You didn’t create male chauvinism and I don’t systemically suffer under it. It is like,” she paused to consider, “… if I broker a deal using some quirk in the tax code, does it really matter if in some corner of the internet there is a conversation happening around whatever physical characteristic or assumption about my personal life seems the most likely to have factored into my success?”

“Is that feminism?” Phillippe genuinely wondered.

“I don’t know. I don’t really think about ‘-isms’ of any sort which we are want to subscribe as a society to people we suspect that we don’t share much in common with, because blaming setbacks on unprovable injury attributed to others does little to further one’s own advancement. If I don’t get the deal I’m after, I’ll make sure not to make the same filing mistakes in the future - full stop. No sense in taking personal offence to the office. I don’t know,” she claimed although it sounded as though she had spent some considerable time with these questions, “I feel like you used to know that and now you are holding up standard maintenance at the possible cost of national security because you feel yourself victim to di Segni’s homophobic tendencies? Fucking grow up, man. Oh, you know- don’t, whatever. I heard there were plans to transfer you intro transportation, so have fun I guess closing roads for all of the Fridays for Future protests that are bound to spring up once you have managed to increase France’s carbon footprint by putting a bunch of non-perishables that could have otherwise easily been shipped to Great Britain by road or rail where admission regulation exists onto boats chocking out gasses that are going to damage the ozone because cleaner, nuclear vessels are not permitted in the merchant marines, God only knows why.”

“Holy shit,” Phillippe lamented. “I had not really even considered that.”

“It’s cool,” Johanna shrugged, “I’m going to go sort it now, so to speak. Only stopped here for coffee, but then the kids -”

“Coffee?” Phillippe blinked. He looked at the watch he spotted her wearing – fully anachronistic to the rest of her day’s style - and wondered if in addition to an expensive timepiece, Adil had also gifted her with a French press she suddenly found herself having to provide for.

“Yeah, that automat out front. Cafés are all closed.”

Phillippe shook his head. Ah, the Anglicans. “That isn’t coffee. It is an insult to French culture to refer to you’re to-go habit in such language,” he could not help but to tease.

“Do you know where café culture actually came from?” Johanna asked critically, “Like its origins?”

“Um, Vienna? By way of Istanbul?” he answered, half-expecting that she had recently been exposed to some measure of the same world-view that had given the too-clever-for-his-own-good Kamil his own, happy to have in Johanna a sparing partner whose weaknesses he well knew rather than a filthy rich Asian lecturing him on eighteenth century bourgeois ideology as though he considered himself fully removed from its lasting intellectual vestiges. Had he himself really risked setting the two ‘younger-siblings-of’ up as a pair for something as flippant as temporarily lessening Richard Plantagenet’s esteem in the eyes of the commissioner? Had he been swindled into such designs by Kamil and his friend Frederick who complained that they found Paris too passé? He imagined what a union between Johanna and Adil might actually look like and felt the outcome could be worse for global politics and the course of world history than anything to indirectly come out of centuries of wars between their two cultures – coffee automats included.

“I’m actually impressed,” Johanna seemed to smile, though he could not quite tell. “Here I thought Parisians didn’t consider anything to have occurred outside their city walls to belong to history, but kay kay – then you force me to rephrase. Do you know who introduced the concept of sitting around with espresso, steamed milk and an air of superiority to your city?”

“If an English name leaves your lips -”

“Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, pretty much immediately upon defeating Napoléon at Waterloo.” Oh good. So she was still an English Imperialist.

“Except he most certainly didn’t,” Phillippe rolled his eyes in reference to the battle itself. It was amazing to him that someone who had been his desk partner throughout secondary school had come out of the same lectures with an understanding so deviant from actuality, but there was a comfort in his friend being true to form. He hated the idea of people -and people he loved in particular – changing with a relationship status and found himself in the midst of considering that admitting to Agnes that he had made breakfast whilst listening to MIKA was probably some rather solid advice.

“Nah,” Johanna consented with the weird enthusiasm she had for anything that let her talk about military history as if it qualified conversation, “but he held up for long enough until the Prussians got there and Blücher obliterated Napoléon’s right flank. Anyway, Blücher planned to continue on to Paris and lay the capitol to waste, but Wellington, who was ethnically Irish but proper English in the sense that he quite liked fucking off to Paris to escape his domestic obligations,” she paused, “wife and kids or parliamentary role, take your pick – decided that he could not let this happen to his holiday hangout, rode in ahead of the Prussian Army and arranged conditions of a military occupation with Fouché or Talleyrand or someone whose name is synonymous with back-dealing, that detail isn’t really important.

“What is, is that when the Germans got there, they had a ridiculous daily beer ration and were not about to sack a town where they basically had an open tab. Gastronomy grew to meet new demands, and since the Brits did not have the same alcohol allotment as their allies, they hung out in cafés while waiting on the restored Bourbons to pay off reparations, and a lot of them just kind of hung around afterwards, too. Fun times. Anyway, yeah – that is why Paris has so many cafés and ass holes pretending to be intellectuals to fill them. Battle of Waterloo.”

“Why is the only sort of history you find interesting inherently militaristic?” Phillippe asked in artificial chastisement.

“I dare say that is not so,” Johanna answered, spinning that he might again admire her flapper dress.

“Willing to guess the depth of your knowledge about the roaring twenties comes out of The Great Gatsby and Babylon Berlin,” Phillippe shook his head.

“Alliteration and cocaine, what is not to love?” Johanna laughed, “But hey, speaking of – looking at the time, I do have to go but before we part,” she claimed with a forlorn look at her experience timepiece, “I’ve an idea of something ‘spontaneous’ you can do for date night since you have no plans of coming to my party which common law and common sense forbid me from throwing.”

“Are you planning to regardless?”

“No. I’ve got a thing.”

“What thing?”

“I told you. I’m going to corner Di Segni at his ward’s scholastic event and do business as I leaned it in Sicily. The only kind of logic Italians listen to.”

“Blackmail and extortion?” Phillippe asked, wondering how she possibly though she was going to manage this as he suspected his boss was never found off guard, even on a Saturday he was supposedly intending to spend supporting his child. “What have you got then?”

“Since we were just talking about coffee culture and the fall of the empire, why don’t you give your girlfriend this for her birthday – little clunky for my taste,” she claimed as she began to unfasten the armband she had likely been wearing for weeks, “but it is kind of the coolest thing I own so I want to put it to good use.”

“Is that the Rolex Adil gave you trying to get out of owning Newcastle?” Phillippe asked, finally, slightly hesitant to acknowledge the relationship Johanna had all but made clear did not wish to discuss with him.

“No,” she corrected flippantly, “it is a Dewitt, and it contains a stand of Napoléon’s hair – there were only some four hundred ever made and they sold for €10,000 at the time, probably worth more today and the one I am wearing most certainly is because it was originally purchased by MBS and has been making the circle of regional diplomacy ever since, at least before landing on my wrist, but I can’t keep it – obviously – and am choosing to close the circle by gifting it to you, since you’ve joined this club of increasing oil revenue at the possible and probable expense of innocent civilians, and, more locally, weekend traffic delays – but no one save I myself seems to have much care much in the way of ongoing overseas conflict,” she professed, however falsely.

“I made a miscalculation -” Phillippe tried to interject.

“And I have a possible way of helping you correct that, or at least having great fun: So, do you recall the weekend after George Floyd’s murder how people the world over toppled statues to slave holders and white supremacists?” Johanna asked with wide eyes and a tone that approached girlish excitement. “Well, I was walking here to get my automat coffee this morning - as we established - and it occurred to me that Paris has an awful lot of monuments to Napoléon, who did reinstate slavery after taking power in a coup and it bothers me that no one took it upon themselves to punish a column of concrete for this sin. So,” she elongated, “why don’t you and your girl go topple a dictator on his own tab if you will, use this to pay your bail bond and whatever UNESCO prices your damages at and just … do your part to remind the world why it hates right-wing dictators on the eve of the US Presidential Elections?”

It was truly a terrible idea, the sort of thing only she or John could ever get away with unscathed, but Phillippe now at least had an idea of something he could weave into a conversation with Agnes if she found his idea of walking along the Seine with a thermo of coffee he would cook for her until they found a nice place to sit and eat the assortment of petits fours he would bake – not knowing what her presences were, perhaps buying a bottle of wine from a street seller somewhere along the route, a bit dull. He could say – ‘ _my crazy friend, the one I mentioned arranging a marriage for at a urinal, thought we would be better off burning effigies,_ ’ and Agnes, as an archaeologist and probably therefore someone with at least some interest in the past, would tell him which long dead leader she would fight in a car park as the meme went, and the ice would be broken if nothing else.

Johanna, he thought – you are a genius and I adore you. “And here I thought you unpolitical,” Phillippe instead smirked. He was nervous enough without having his best-friend-by-default shooting down his actual idea for a romantic evening with notions of things that only worked for her because of factors he was of no mind or mood to get her to try to acknowledge midday in a supermarket.

“Oh, I am,” Johanna confirmed and complained, “but the fact of it is Trump has laid the groundwork for peace in the Middle East which doesn’t exactly bode well for my business model. Who am I going to sell football teams to when the shelling stops?”

In her answer he did not know what else he had expected.

“You are legitimately the worst person I’ve ever in my life known,” he told her. This was true, not that it did much to lessen his affections, unkeen as he was to admit them in so many words.

“That is a bit hyperbolic,” Johanna answered with the same dry sarcasm as his own. “You work for the European Commission, so at best I imagine I’m the worst person you have ever played D&D with, but then I’m not so sure … John did quite recently kind of set both you and Richard up to fail in truly devastating fashion just because he didn’t feel like revising, I suppose, and Constance - well, she is an angle when she is not around my siblings - but she and John together are a constant headache and she and Geoffrey did have three kids, who I do love, but I’ve had them for a week now and I understand why you and she can both drink wine without gaging, as I suppose all parents must.”

“You would have an easier time of it if you did not give them caffeine and sugar, I promise.”

“Ordinarily I _don’t_ ,” Johanna clarified, “but today I have an opportunity to make a point and I well mean to. The girls especially are complaining about home school, and I mean I get it, but try explaining solidarity to young women at an age where ego is first starting to emerge – it is an exercise in futility, I promise. So, I have come on the next best thing. I am going to remind them that as much as they miss their friends, there is nothing inherently fun about the classroom – Adil’s son Kamil,” she paused, “yeah, that annoys me, too -”

“Almost as much as sharing a name with your not-twin brother?” Phillippe suggested.

“Not even by the half,” Johanna answered, “but rhyme schemes are tacky all the same unless you’ve got a sick beat behind them, alas I digress, Adil’s son Kamil is a prodigy – not in the sense that every parent likes to think of their child being,” she clarified, “but certifiably so, like Di Segni’s boy, he has made it to the final round of this international maths competition, the last seven hours of which are set to commence at noon. Now, Eleanor, Alix and Arthur are all smart, granted, but they are going to be bored out of their fucking minds, struggling to sit still throughout the whole of it, knowing they will subject themselves to my wrath if they don’t, and in effect, happy to open their laptops on Monday morning where they can scroll Insta at the same time as ‘attending’ lecture.”

Phillippe laughed. “That is actually brilliant. How are you not running some banana republic at this stage in your life?”

“Got caught up mothering, ‘innit?” Johanna shrugged. “Same reason more women aren’t the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies or so we are told.”

“How did you land this baby-sitting gig anyway? Stan working a double? John finally decide to revise?”

“Not exactly. Oh, you are going to love this: last week he and Arthur were at it over God knows what – probably Arthur did not want to eat his veg or something small but of great contention at that age and John just was not in the mind to let it be much of a discussion. Anyway, sometime after supper, he got hold of John’s mobile, opened Pokémon Go and deleted _everything_ – left the account but transferred all of his Pokémon, which you know can’t be reversed, just emptied all of his items and deleted all of his friends, even turned off Adventure Sync. I’ve -really- I’ve never seen my brother so murderous. So I stepped in to save Arthur, mostly because I wanted to high-five him because that is next-level for a six-year-old,” her eyes smiled, “I don’t know that I’ve ever been so proud or that I have ever simultaneously both wanted to defrost and fertilise my own eggs and have my tubes tied.”

“Such romantic notions of modern life. Where is Stan in all of this?” Phillippe asked.

“Laughing too, probably. I mean coughing, mostly, but with mirth over her son’s exploits as you would expect of her,” she paused, noting Phillippe’s admitted confusion. “Really, no one has told you? Constance tested positive and is in full-out quarantine. I mean – don’t worry, she is going to recover – she has to, right?” she seemed to ask in earnest, much as she seemed to offer assurances, “And she is already halfway through it, just another week and she should be back on her feet.”

Constance was sick? This altered to context of everything. “How are you here, acting like anything is normal when -” Phillippe began to accuse, frightened and seeking out someone convenient to blame.

“Because my nieces and nephew are worried sick about their mum,” Johanna hissed back, “as am I, as is John, as is everyone else in our family, but it serves no one to let that surface, Constance the very least. Right now, she just needs to rest and see her kids happy and smiling when she wakes up for a few minutes of Face Time **.** Now,” she adjusted, “if you’ll excuse me, I have to go establish a sense of normalcy, sort out this project you want to delay, and do a cake tasting with my betrothed, because it is _my_ birthday ‘too’, and because if this marriage is going to happen it has to be fast if it is going to coincide with my plans of making the most of the pandemic by having one of those huge middle eastern weddings where I, my groom, and all three hundred attendees end up dying of the virus.”

“So hard to tell when you are kidding,” Phillippe could not help but to admit. How could she joke about something like this when there were such serious and immediate repercussions?

“Oh, I’m serious,” Johanna claimed, cringing. “Can you imagine? There are football matches on every night now and I can think of a thousand terrible deaths preferable to boredom. Anyway, since you started this, assuming Constance won’t be up for it, want to be my Maid of Honour? Man of Honour?” she paused, squinted, surrendered to a question he had yet been offered a chance to pose. “I’d ask one of my sisters but Eleanor just gave a fuck ton of her husband’s money to a charity set up in Thomas Becket’s name so we are not speaking, obvs, and Mathilda is a natural blonde so I can’t have her standing next to me at the alter making it obvious to everyone that I’m actually a ging. But anyway, we’ve got to go. You, as a member of my bridal party,” she decided for him, “have to help me eat cake because, I mean, I am good at multi-tasking, but I can’t well verbally crucify That One Catholic with my mouth half full, and besides, you may need to explain bits of calculous I’ve -predictably, I might add- never used in real life so I can follow along as two misers try to spit a penny. For seven hours. God,” she sighed, “this is going to be _miserable_.”

Was this the new normal?

“By That One Catholic, do you mean … what do you mean?” Phillippe squinted.

“Di Segni, who else?” Johanna shrugged. Perhaps realising in the release that the assertion required explanation, she offered, “So Adil has a theory that if you put seven Europeans into a room, regardless of how pious and faithful they actually are or even what denomination, if any, they adhere to, there is always That One Catholic there defending the infallibility of the Pope, independent of anything significant to the discussion.”

Christ, how much time were they two spending together and how much was he truly to blame for this?

“I’ve never experienced this.”

“Yeah because you are usually That One Catholic. Unless Di Segni is there, then it is invariably him. Make sense?” she paused, counted, “So we are only five – you, me, and my late brother’s children -but assuming Adil isn’t as good at fractions as his all-too-gifted-son and you are worried about the implications for your moral soul, if you want, just throw those into my cart and I will save you the embarrassment of buying your own contraceptives, provided you are up for a bit of afternoon cake and coup. So, you in, champ?”


	7. Petty and Uninteresting

By three in the afternoon, Phillippe Capet had listened to five separate presentations on applied mathematics, concluding well before the first was though that as was the case with any recital, this would have only been watchable if his own child was in it. Even the educators, he noted, looked practically comatose by the first intermission whilst proud parents spoke hurriedly to their offspring, offering encouragement accordingly. Kamil Ayyub, however, did not present himself when the curtains closed to canteen refreshments. His father let Phillippe turn his attention periodically to the scatterings of socially-distanced academics and their prodigies with mild anticipation for a few minutes before commenting dryly that his boy knew better than to come seeking his approval, having fallen so short of his objective. This, to Phillippe, felt a bit harsh, but he did not trust himself to offer such criticism to a man repudiated to have levelled regimes for lesser offences. _‘It is an Asian thing,_ ’ Adil explained of his son with a hint of a smile. ‘ _Timidity?_ ’ Phillippe countered before he could stop himself. ‘ _Perfectionism_ ,’ his answer came without a hint of humour.

Adil, he thought, had probably never encountered serious challenge to this idea which he clearly held of himself. He was so gifted an administrator and organiser that the successes his more prominent brother enjoyed seemed to all happen as though God had willed it, whether one pressed his hands together or raised them to the heavens to pray. He was taller than Phillippe had imagined – which was to say, taller than himself, and while it was difficult to make a direct assessment on Adil’s features from underneath the year’s most sought after accessory, Phillippe could reasonably envision the imagine being mass produced on bio-cotton tee-shirts for a future generation of left-wing university students to wear while plucking out the chords to anything Dylan out on the quad, themselves feeling especially original and worthwhile in the cringe worthy act.

Little Kamil, in other words, had a lot to live up to and his continued absence indicated that he had long since internalised as much.

Phillippe would have traded most any of his physical possessions for the child’s company, not because he bore the boy any great affection, but because he was not up to the task of making conversation with someone with whom her shared but a single commonality. Johanna had made herself scare the moment the lights turned on in the auditorium under the pretext of returning a phone call, first giving her nieces and nephew a several equations to work out in the intermedium copied from their individual coursework, with instructions that they would not get to enjoy the cake samples until they had all completed their tasks. Phillippe had commented that this was rather refined of her; Adil was of the mind that if the children were to succeed in the half-hour time allotment of intermission, rather than complaining that the others had things easier, Eleanor and Alix should help Arthur with his addition and subtraction, Eleanor should explain long-division to her younger sister and Arthur should ask one of the many educators who would be happy to do so to give the bionomic formulae to his eldest sister. Teamwork was the lesson they would do better to take away from this excursion and Adil claimed he had half a mind to tell them as much but did not feel this was his place.

Phillippe wished he had taken this as an excuse to do so himself as it would have served a reasonable excuse to exit the conversation as had likely been intended. Instead, he chose to continue it with a comment that Adil would soon be their uncle, asking the silence when it settled again between them where Johanna was though he could see her himself as she paced the pavement, occasionally causing the building’s sliding glass doors to open and close with no greater purpose than to let in autumn’s cool air.

He looked at his new watch, waiting for intermission to end, disappointed to find that only ten minutes had gone by – which was not that he was particularly interested in watching future Fields Medal recipients write equations. Adil leaned over with some interest when he saw the object – perhaps likewise hoping for time’s hurried passage – and Phillippe made a joke to this end before it occurred to him that the timepiece had once belonged to this would-be sultan.

“That was given to me by Jared Kushner along with funds, arms and ammunition when my daughter Dayfa told Washington that the Kurdish rebels were considering a re-brand from communistic to democratic,” Ayyub commented without inflection. “Not that such makes any operational difference, nor that I suppose they have any expectation in kind, but the unelected in systems founded on the principles of the latter are particularly sensitive to marketing. I spent a small fortune sending her to Georgetown and these are the dividends of my efforts.” Phillippe was not certain where the criticism was directed.

“Are you offended to find it on my wrist?” he asked, half worried that Johanna in her general indifference had given him something of great sentimental value.

Adil shook his head. “It doesn’t surprise me that my daughter is brighter than most of her professors and the men selected to lead them – for that much would be true regardless of where she was studying diplomacy – but to such an extent?” he raised a thick eyebrow, “I worry. I do. The Americans, or so I observed when I had the opportunity to meet with their representatives, are not good at geography. Rivers in particular seem to confuse them – and why wouldn’t they, from my understanding the Mississippi serves as a unit of measurement, but then I can’t claim an understanding of the imperial system -”

“I think it is just an east and west thing,” Phillippe gave. “But I am not really sure either. I’ve been cooking a lot during lockdown and I still have to use a metric converter to gauge how much a ‘cup’ is.”

“Dayfa as well and she presently lives among them, but alas I digress. When I referenced something as being on the Tigris to Kushner on his subsequent visit, he, and really, the whole of his delegation seemed confused by the vocabulary. I thought they was having a go at me, but as we talked, I came to appreciate that the only rivers the Americans could name outside of their boarders were the Rhein in Central Europe and the Nile in Egypt. They also _thought_ -and I quote - there _might_ be a Yellow River in China, but they were not sure if that was ‘racist’ to say – and the idea of projecting such an impression seemed to embarrass them more than the genuinely racist practice of policing conflicts without bothering to know the first thing about a people or ever the most general geography of a place.”

“That isn’t just Americans. Pretty much sums up my experience being a white guy in Europe, too,” Phillippe said, hoping the statement to carry an irony he could not directly claim.

Adil laughed as well – albeit perhaps out of curtesy – before turning his head towards the opening door door, hoping for Johanna walk through rather than past, to return to act as a barrier between himself and the parts of her world that he did not quite feel privy to. It occurred to Phillippe that the relationship between the two existed primarily in these parameters, Johanna translating Adil’s intentions to perspective business partners who would likely be dissuaded by the man’s clear sense of superiority, something he could not help but project even when otherwise attempting to be polite. Phillippe did not like him at all, but he could see why Johanna did.

He remained confused, however, as to how she had managed to convince a sceptical western public of Adil’s sense of honour and chivalry, unless of course she shared the contempt of her client-groom, which in the light of Phillippe’s own recent behaviour he could not entirely dismiss as a possible causation.

“So, to answer your question in something more than observational antidote,” Adil continued, “no, I don’t take offence to your wearing my gift. It is an amusing trinket, but I don’t subscribe to the Emperor’s assessment that bobbles make a nation. Oh,” he paused, mistaken Phillippe’s lack on context as being his fault to bear, “you’ll forgive the paraphrase, the precise quote escapes my present recollection.”

“Have you a great interest in history?” Phillippe asked. He could not himself offer much to the conversation he imagined evoking as his own individual interests in the past were largely restricted to the middle ages (and largely reduced to the fictional kingdom of Westeros at that), but Johanna was well versed in the subject insofar as weapons were involved, and it might do the two well to have something in common to keep them warm during long desert nights beside the now-probable ownership of a football club in England and a shared dislike of the game itself. Yes, Phillippe decided, this would be fitting – the two both had surnames that spoke to something in the distant past, perhaps suggesting likewise noble lineages that would explain something of their respective egos, or as was the case with his own last name, an otherwise interesting story in itself: Phillippe’s great grandfather had changed the family name to Capet during the Nazi occupation out of what he had allegedly claimed to be a sense of defiant national pride. There was, of course, quite possibly a simultaneous desire to conceal his Jewish ancestry at play though the Cohens -as they had once been called - had been staunchly Roman Catholic for generations, not, it should be noted, that anyone in the Resistance had asked or would have likely cared half as much as Phillippe himself did to his great shame, or as, he suspected, Adil might in light of the antisemitism which Phillippe felt comfortable blindly assigning to the Muslim commander without question. Everyone in the Arab world hated Israel, did they not? or so Phillippe assessed, unable to discontent state from faith as it existed elsewhere, intertwined as the two were in his own bureaucratic existence.

“Only insofar as it allows the present to seem less complex,” the Kurd explained, “though not through virtue of comparison. Conflicts grow like seeds into trees, the leaves may fall only to grow anew after a long and idle winter, and when - landscaping alone does nothing to uproot them, if my metaphor is not too simple to follow.”

“No, not at all – if anything I worry my intentions … with that question were too banal,” Phillippe answered, a tad disappointed in the one he had in turn been given (pleased though he might otherwise have been not to have to confess that he was not in fact decent from an ancient line of kings as his condescending counterpart might well legitimately claim of himself.)

“You mean to bring up that our mutual friend enjoys such topics without suggesting that she and I share anything beyond deceit, or am I mistaken?” Adil surmised.

“I would never accuse you of such,” Phillippe claimed, uncomfortable in his own honesty in this regard.

The fact of the matter was he had watched the two interact during the competition in the darkened auditorium where there was no immediate reason for deception – they seemed comfortable in each other’s company until the conversation turned to the relationship political convenience bade them to pretend towards – something they proved poor at doing, each likely afraid the other would break with the romantic phantasy first.

“Then you plainly understand public relations better that I,” Adil said. “I do not know how we define love and respect differently that these abstracts are incompatible with one another in your culture, but part of me fears I am beginning to. I enjoy your friend’s company and I have no reason to believe she is object to mine. If the politics and press had not taken it upon themselves to make more of this than either of us are positioned to give, who can say what might have been when business ethics were no longer a consideration for either of us?” he mused almost wistfully before reclaiming his realpolitik. “Now I worry that when we interact, regardless of immediate circumstance, I am only enforcing an idea of inequality which I - to generalise, perhaps grossly – see all of you carry despite the emancipation in which you take such pride. I cannot be of any comfort to her without suggesting that I consider her weak or her frustrations unwarranted her. I cannot say ‘I will take care of this’ without the insinuation this existing that the reasons I believe she herself cannot have anything to do with the person she is. In Kurdistan, the distinction – it is not the same. Then, where I come from, I might well have already long since taken her as my wife, and neither of us would be asked to defend the attraction.”

“Do you _want_ to be married with her?” Phillippe asked.

“No,” Adil claimed, “you misunderstand me. I want her to be happy, and I do not think she can define that abstract in the domestic sphere. I would be content with whatever part of herself she might be willing to share with me, but she has been given no choice, and therefore I want none of it. Except Newcastle,” he adjusted. “That I will happily take off her hands.”

“Are arranged marriages not your standard?” This was all growing rather irritating.

Phillippe - though he had not for a second given the concept of consent a curtesy thought whilst trying his hand at conspiracy - would not be talked down to on the issue of equality by a man he imagined kept a haram and who would force Johanna to deny Christ as a condition of her imprisonment at his court, however well-educated and politically active his adult daughters evidently were. Having never seen pictures of any of the Ayyubid women (largely because international news did not warrant a check on his news ticker preoccupied as he was with the pandemic and to a lesser extent PSG transfer rumours), the Parisian could not help but to assume that they all wore headscarves, which naturally served what he considered a fair argument against any notion of liberation -

And what for oppression!

This clear chauvinist, Phillippe decided as he levelled his gaze at Adil, would not get away with levelling such claims against a good Christian like himself! He simply would not permit it.

“Out of curiosity, can you name four major cities on the Tigris?” Adil calmly answered Phillippe’s ‘fuck you’ with his own.

“Um,” Phillippe delayed, taken off-guard by the tactic. He was fairly sure he could deliver two, but that accomplishing the half might divulge into an argument over how political maps were drawn up by Britain and France after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, how Adil’s homeland thus did not enjoy a geographical distinction, and (ultimately) how it likely had been in poor form on his part to start rumours about his friend and a terrorist who could make her a queen without a country.

“I would never force one of my sisters or daughters to accept a man she did not want, especially to further the cause of natural deterioration, especially when funding was approved and in place to hinder its progression,” Adil continued, satisfied that the Frenchman was unable to answer his inquiry.

But oh, how little he understood of Europe, it seemed.

“More is at risk than a simple infrastructure project,” Phillippe explained, grateful to have finally arrived at a theme in which he exercised authority. “If allowed to be seen to completion, the rest of Europe will have cause to think there is no consequence to their living the Union -”

“Perhaps the bridges you ought to be worrying yourself over are of the rhetorical nature,” Adil interrupted, “though this poses an interesting question: say there is a collapse resulting from your designed negligence, your commission is bound to face an inquiry into the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians – will you consider us comparable? I want to help my people free themselves from the systematic oppression your forefathers arranged for the sake for trade, and so you consider me a ‘terrorist’ because such is politically convenient and does not require too much of you cognitively – but your justification for your blatant disregard for the safety and wellbeing of people who have been tolled and taxed to use your roads, what exactly is the descriptive noun that _this_ action evokes? Please, indulge me, I’m curious.”

“I don’t think you are a terrorist,” Phillippe lied. “If I did, I would have never suggested to Richard -”

“My understanding is that this is precisely the reason my name came up,” Adil told him flatly.

Fining no response which he could himself defend, Phillippe shifted slightly. “If you have feelings for Johanna, I think you should tell her.”

Adil shook his head. “Do you care for her feelings so little? Or simply know her even less? Or is this more of a case of you needing to ease your conscious in this regard?”

“I think you are well matched,” he said with some conviction, if only for the fact that Adil gave him cause to question if conversation in itself was just an extended joke with him being the punchline as Johanna did little if anything to disguise, “and I – look,” he swallowed, “I gained nothing from this professionally and personally I may have well lost more than I can properly account for. I’m not … that is, I don’t have an agenda here. I just … if I’m the only obstacle between the two of you and the possibility of whatever happiness there is to be found in this world, I don’t want to be that. Not at all. I think I might well like you if we had met before I ever had the chance to know your name,” he lied as diplomats did before returning to the facts as he saw them, “and you seem to care about our mutual friend as you allude to her.”

At this almost-honest admission, Adil began to laugh hardily. “Forgive me Richard was right about you to the very letter - it is so terribly easy to get you riled up and self-righteous! My, my – how do you manage to go about your day?”

“You and Johanna are perfect for one another,” Phillippe reasserted, indignant at the accuracy of his own assessment. “You all are. You, and Richard and Johanna of course and now I’m not sorry in the least for whatever role I played in setting you up for you deserve your misery in the exact company it takes – but I stand by my valuation that you should be if you let something as petty and uninteresting as your origin become the full of your story. I hope you are just as happy when it is I who is so positioned to laugh at your perceived flaws in your lowest moments!” he spat.

“As ‘petty’ and ‘uninteresting’ as a government worker who would gamble the economic securities of those whose taxes pay his income out of a -when so considered - paradoxical drive to retain his level of employment?” Adil mocked. “You are right, it is not exactly the stuff of Shakespeare.”

“What do you gain out of taking a side in this?” Phillippe wondered, exasperated by it all. What business, he wondered, did the nominal head of the Plantagenet family have in feeding him such honeyed words of empathy and understanding only to laugh about him behind his back with an enemy of all of Christianity? “Taking Richard’s, specifically?” he demanded.

“It is more a matter of what I stand to lose if I don’t,” the haughty Kurd answered with a hint that he shared something of Phillippe’s distaste “When Richard called me, explaining that he had gotten word that the yellow press was planning to call corruption on the Newcastle deal with a frankly ludicrous solution to the perceived problem, I thought to test his theory by gifting Johanna with the watch you now wear. She rang me immediately upon signing for the package – as I predicted she would, asking me to clarify my intentions: it would defeat the purpose of my hiring her if allegations of corruption were to emerge, but if my interest in owning a sporting franchise in England had waned, she was certain she could arrive at an explanation that would suffice all negotiating parties. I told her I thought we might instead marry – and after a slightly uncomfortable exchange in which she alluded she was open to anal but could do without the pomp and ceremony of imposed religiosity -”

“I’m sorry, what?” Phillippe gaped.

Adil blinked as though the question came as a surprise to him. “It is something you just say when you are Sunni and like sixteen – a loophole in faith, if you will; you say to a girl three times that you are married, enjoy each other’s company in a way that leaves her a virgin for her future husband and then ‘divorce’ when the act is through. How do you not know this?” he squinted. “I thought you went to public school together with Johanna and her brother John.”

“I um … Johanna is half English and when they say ‘public’ they mean … something else,” Phillippe dismissed. “But you and she … have done this?” He imagined against his will Adil mounting Johanna as though she was one of his prized polo ponies, a phantasy that was not entirely dissimilar to the more vivid and far less fortunate one he had and had been returning to of late of being taken by Richard in the same way. Phillippe blushed at the consideration that women also had this orifice as he begun to question if they ever stuck objects inside of them in this way just to see how it would feel. This notion reddened his cheeks further which proved a blessing, at least, Phillippe reasoned, his blood was not being directed anywhere where it could prove truly mortifying.

Adil seemed disgusted by him all the same. “No, because she is a thirty-year-old ‘C’ and ‘E’ Catholic and whatever devotion I otherwise claim, I’m in my late forties and in an open, ongoing armed conflict with three sperate entities to have declared themselves caliphates. But politics and practicalities aside, Johanna and I would both be consenting adults in this hypothetical – which clearly was nothing more than that at this time as my ‘bride’ knew nothing of these designs. So, I looked into it a little bit. No, I didn’t. I’ve lied to you and such was not my intention,” he explained needlessly though he seemed to think his very honour was at stake. “I called my son Kamil asking him how his preparations were going, what other schools were still competing, and if his rather unlikely pen-friend Frederick Hohenstaufen was still in contention. It took a while to get it out of him, but yes, the two were in communication in spite of rules and Covid-19 restrictions, yes, they had met up secretly, no – he did not think the Commissioner knew about it unless one of his lackeys had grounds to tell him – ‘umm, hmm,’ I thought, knowing the suggestion of my wedding my agent had come from one such subordinate.

“Now, Frederick bears absolutely no blame in this, don’t mistake me, but his legal guardian deserves to be tried and shot for war crimes,” Adil continued with dry conviction. “That said, the man, di Segni, your boss if I am not completely mistaken, is no fool, but he has certainly taken you for one. You think this is about punishing a nation over which Europe – as a notion – no longer exercises any control in hopes of warning off other nationalist-leaning governments? My dear boy, if your superior’s objection England exists, it fiscal rather than philosophical. There is less commerce within the trade union now, and to increase this he is setting Saudi Arabia up with a flux of disposable income and the understanding that much of this will be spent buying weapons from the French and Germans, meaning more money will go into the EU through allocation.

“Now, the only thing standing in the way of this is an iron clad contract, which he tasked you to delay in a court process, and by the time I put all of this together, Richard had rung me back with some domestic entanglement he was making all too much of – he had expressed some measure of concern for you when you were a little boy which unbeknownst to him had led to decades of simmering resentment, you sought to have your revenge for what its worth in a way that made it appears as being business as usual, you used his brother to instigate a legitimate corruption charge which would tie up maintenance, and somewhere in all of this, you underestimated our mutual friend’s particular expertise on account of her gender, but that I can forgive you, for it works in my favour.”

“You want to marry my friend, possibly against her will which you make such claims of respecting in a way that you would dare to insinuate I myself do not,” Phillippe hissed. He was clearly wrong about John and his motivations for what they were, but could he possibly be right about the rest of it?

“I did what any sensible man in my situation would, bought a ticket to Paris and proposed to Johanna that we make good on a threat. Actually, she proposed to me that the story of us was bound to be shared enough on social media to trigger Facebook’s algorithm, allowing me to, if not compete directly with the forces that would divide my region along familiar lines, then to garner enough support to keep something of the stalemate my family has seen to since the fall of Aleppo.”

“And what does your brother have to say about all of this?” Phillippe wondered.

“About Europe’s continued drive towards colonialism in the near east decades after this stopped being official government policy or about my coming nuptials?” Adil asked, likely in earnest.

“Um,” Phillippe paused – how were they always on this? It was exhausting, especially for one without a care either way.

“No, he is delighted over my present arrangement with Johanna. Richard … less so, but I am sure we can sort that out.”

Phillippe snorted. “He would not enjoy the tax exemptions he does if he didn’t commit himself to charity initiatives in your region. You could always try that argument.”

“So, you can prove yourself useful. Noted.” At this assessment, Adil took out his phone, typing something with his forefinger which Phillippe had to suppose was related to the fraud he suspected in the contractor. He continued to stare at the screen when the automatic doors opened once more, this time with his bride-to-be entering and for the first time in her thirty years looking entirely misplaced.

“I can’t do this,” she said.


	8. Inconsistent and Apologetic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Words. Yeap. More of them.

“I can’t do this,” Johanna said again without elaboration, her voice as distant as her present stare, more directed towards her betrothed than it was towards Phillippe, though absent of any context it was difficult to tell whom she addressed in this vague negation. It occurred to the Parisian that his friend threw around this phrase rather liberally – Johanna could by no means humour her mother’s critiques, nor bureaucratic inefficiency, nor rush hour traffic, nor the recruitment spiel cashiers at large commercial chains were obliged to recite when she told them she was not enrolled in a point-based-reimbursement programme, nor non-food items marketed as being ‘vegan’, nor John and Constance when their constant bickering threated to verge from banal, personal insults into pretentious intellectualism, nor any number of other mundane realities of no real merit

– but in all such instances, Phillippe found himself frowning, Johanna’s verbal tantamount of a sharp sigh sounded dismissive as opposed to defeatist.

Phillippe did his best to access the assumed object in the recurring sentence structure as she repeated herself once more. Was she talking about the tedious scholastic competition? About the cake tasting in which she had yet to herself partake? About the idea of babysitting Constance’s spoiled children for another week?

Or, perhaps, about her impending nuptials to an odd foreigner?

Phillippe found himself glad for the mask preventing anyone from taking much note of the relief he felt in the idea that the latter was the most likely of the possibilities that had crossed into his mind in quick succession. In proposing the engagement, he had never presumed that his suggestion would amount to anything beyond a slight reduction in regard on part of the Plantagenet name - associations being what they were (and the one he imagined existing between Richard and Adil being vague at best.) Phillippe never would have anticipated Johanna even finding out about the proposal, much less accepting it –

For watching things play out between the two, he himself could not.

There had been a few instances in Phillippe’s life in which he had given himself over to imagining that he and Johanna might yet wind up together when over a beer, a bowl and a few bants he would forget the sum of his concerns in her company and decide for himself that life might really be as simple as the details memory could never quite be relied upon to recall. This was not, of course, such an instance, and he had long ceased harbouring and such feelings or phantasies in her regard, but months into the uncertainty of this interdict that was the pandemic, Phillippe found himself lonely for any semblance of what had once seemed normal.

He wanted to return to the way things had once been in any respect, but watching one of his oldest friends lift her gaze in a fruitless attempt to hold her tears in her eyes with the expectation that no one would notice them, it occurred to him that what he longed for most from that which seemed lost was not a regression into any of the toxic patterns that were so easy to get lost in and lose track of when so life was not measured at two metres, but rather the idea that tomorrow, somehow, would be different than today.

He realised that he did not want to return to some romantic past of sitting around a table with his handful of close friends having lost the notion that they could not each grown to challenge expectations as his own presently were.

Phillippe did not like Adil. He did not like the idea of Johanna marrying a Muslim full stop –

but he absolutely hated the fact that something had been said to her over the phone to force her return to her notion of isolation being preferable to the possibility of disappointment.

Without allowing it to occur to him that he was a product of his environment rather than the cause of the prejudices that persisted within it, he loathed the idea that in his attempt to delay a project on the grounds of his own regrettable biases he had ignited a larger backlash that had caused someone he deeply cared for shy from her own ideas of happiness, even if these differed from his designs.

“I can’t even,” Johanna again assessed as her eyes finally broke into a flood.

Phillippe did not know what precisely he was meant to do in this situation.

He could not fault himself his confusion, however, for ordinarily Johanna actively portrayed that simply did care enough for the world to show any concern for its happenings, that her heart did not beat and that as such it could not break. In nearly two decades of comradery, Phillippe could only recount seeing her quite so distraught on but a handful of occasions, all of which he had come to with the benefit of context.

He had his suspicions, sure, but what good would it do to offer his apologies or condolences accordingly when her continued doubts began to cradle his own?

At school they had been called to the headmaster’s office to a chorus of single-syllable taunts from their classmates, unruly with the notion that their days were about to be made more interesting with a prank and subsequent punishment around which they might invent a new legend. Johanna, who had some considerable measure of experience with the man, left her books and bag in homeroom though they had been instructed to bring them. She walked briskly and met Phillippe’s apprehension with a shrug and a promise she could not possibly keep, _‘What? I really haven’t done anything this time and I’m confident that you haven’t either, we’ll be back in our seats before bio.’_

Phillippe had himself never been called into the office before – having never done anything worthy of warrant or repose – and responded to a notion with a nod that Johanna must have confused with confidence. In the office he found his father pacing before the bookcase, his head hung and shoulders slouched, whilst the headmaster, standing behind his chair at his in itself foreboding old mahogany desk bid them both to take a seat. ‘ _There has been an accident,_ ’ he explained when at last Johanna’s younger brother joined them.

Neither Johanna, nor John, nor Phillippe, nor his father said much of anything on the matter until loading into his station wagon in the carpark where another classmate who had been bid to fetch Johanna her books met them and asked what was going on. ‘ _My brother Henry and Phillippe’s sister Margaret and a few of their friends from uni were in an accident on a yacht they were renting. The coast guards are looking for survivors, but it is not hopeful. They say that these things never are,_ ’ she repeated as she had been told almost dutifully. Then, in the backseat, she reached for his hand as she began to weep, and rather than sit with his family at the closed-casket funeral, he followed Johanna outside to the cathedral’s gardens when she walked out of her brother’s service and wordlessly held her hand there, too.

Three years later, when Geoffrey was trampled by his own horse at a minor tournament, he had first met Johanna in the hospital waiting room where she looked at him with wide eyes and the unrealistic expectation that he was about to tell her she misunderstood whatever message in kind her father had sent. Phillippe offered his arms and they both cried together until at some point Johanna left the comfort of embrace to go yell at her mother to let Constance – ‘ _Geoffrey’s wife! The mother of his children!_ ’ – fill out the intake paperwork herself if she wanted to, and Phillippe went into the chapel to pray as though any act of condemnation or veneration could do anything to stop internal bleeding.

He had managed to express his condolences at her father’s untimely death by kissing her hand at the funeral as she stood in a line with her other siblings, himself hesitant to offer more than a reluctant ‘ _I’m sorry for your loss,_ ’ as he had briefly been a suspect in the subsequent inquiry which court corruption quickly closed when Henry the elder’s two surviving sons emerged as the most likely culprits.

Phillippe sent flowers when Johanna’s husband died of ‘natural’ causes (which everyone knew to have in fact be an exasperated wine and Xanax habit) shortly thereafter, and throughout the years he had tried his best to offer her gestures of comradery in other moments when the world had gotten the better of her – being waitlisted at her first choice university, the Brexit referendum, the Kardashians being cancelled – but in all of these instances he had a context to dictate to him what she required. With a ‘ _I can’t even_ ’ he found he could not either. He had his suspicions, to be sure, but at one and the same moment he had never known his friend to be made victim to her own attractions.

Adil sought no further explanation whatsoever before taking her hands into his own, the action of which made an ally of Johanna in Phillippe’s search for reason, though the details that troubled her escaped anything of his care or consideration. Had Adil prayed yet? Would he have adequate time to wash now that he had touched her? She looked at him as though she struggled to source his concern and care and began listing every protocol and practicality of little present interest. For his part, Phillippe would have objected, but despite all of the countless doubts she clearly held, Johanna made no physical move to shake herself from her client-groom’s embrace.

In her inaction he saw all that he had done to contribute to this particular manifestation of uncertainty. Perhaps Johanna did not actively think of the implications his recent actions and accusations had on her standing when it came to any of this ‘isms’ she wrote off as unsubstantial, but on a level deeper than assumptions and appearances she clearly took pause. It was not like her to take comfort and seeking it complied even less to the confidence she portrayed, but here she was, out of excuses outside factors might otherwise imply, letting herself be held by a man with whom her whole relationship was a lie. Because Phillippe had been the first to tell it, it would never bloom into anything but outside of this small gesture, and Johanna was all to absent to indulge herself in what might well be love.

Phillippe thought about what Adil had said out of hand, that if this story had played out in his country which could not exist, it might have had a different ending and they two might well have long since reached it. It was not practical, but phantasy was in itself far preferable than anything rooted in politics and Phillippe felt her had robbed them both of what could never be, or at least of the conditions creating an ease with which they could accept it. Part of him wanted to take his leave, but his vanities and curiosities kept him still. What had Johanna been told to see her so undone and by whom?

“Habibi,” Adil said, pulling her ever closer, continuing in his own tongue, “ma al-dhay jazajke?”

She closed her eyes. “Nothing, nothing immediate, I mean, but all the same I don’t the mental energy to engage a bureaucrat effectively at this moment,” she answered in French, perhaps for Phillippe’s benefit, perhaps in attempt to afflict him with some measure of injury. He wished Adil would take his leave and this allow his bride space to speak her mind without censor. Johanna had been too nonchalant over the engagement when she had addressed the subject in Monoprix with her humours so dry Phillippe could practically taste the gin she would have served on silver trays had social distancing not seen her party cancelled.

No, Phillippe thought – she was furious, she must surely be, same as he must surely stand punishment for whatever unintended outcome of his scheme to delay ground-breaking on a construction contract had caused her to cry.

“Does anyone ever have the energy to engage a bureaucrat?” Adil teased with a small snort and a side-glace at Phillippe. Did it somehow escape him that such was precisely the point?

In his abrupt indignation, it occurred to Phillippe that this statement, however insulting, encompassed in full all that had caused him to dream of holding such a job when the other little boys and girls he knew were penning their school essays for a parent’s night about how they would one day be footballers, astronauts, firefighters, famous singers and ballerinas accordingly. He had a distinct memory of the five sentences he had written to ends he as a parent still failed to understand and the picture he had drawn of his then yet unrealised self in a suit with a speech bubble reading _‘Non!’_ and his mother’s expression when she came home after he had already been tucked into bed and asked him why he did not have more imagination, kissing him on the forehead and calling him her little prince. He answered that he wanted to be a king one day or the closest thing to it, and that the job of a king was to protect his people through a complex system of paperwork that executed his will without necessitating open warfare with his vassals, which he did not think he would be very good at because he was routinely one of the last kids picked during sport. He had come on this understanding of the world, after all, though his mother and uncles’ periodic reference of administrative hold-ups, and viewing the woman as one of the two people with enough power to ground him if he gave cause, he imagined that anyone with the authority to effectively send her to her room must have been ordained by God in some great fashion.

His mother did not quite let it go after this initial exchange, not at first, and in hopes to help young Phillippe to better socialise enrolled him in an endless series of assorted team sports, which came to nothing as he was, in fact, genuinely bad at each. Eventually, however, she signed him up for horseback riding where he met Geoffrey which led to him becoming desk partners with one of the most popular girls in his year and prior to a career assessment test meant to dictate their last two years of elective courses, the question being posed to him again.

_‘What are you hoping for your results to say realistically and what do you actually want to do with the rest of your life?’_ Johanna had asked him in the few minutes a teacher was attempting to give what amounted to a questionnaire the weight of significance by telling them all they were not to turn their papers over until everyone had been handed a copy.

_‘I’ll probably wind up with something like lawyer or accountant -’_ Phillippe had realistically assessed.

_‘Like your mum and dad. Kay, scans.’_

_‘But what I really want to be is a government bureaucratic. What about you?’_

_‘What are you serious?’_ Johanna snorted _. ‘Like someone who tells people what forms to fill out without themselves really knowing what is necessary?’_

_‘I think the art in it is to give enough half-answers to maximise revenue without the cost of commitment,’_ Phillippe tried to correct her perception by presenting his own.

_‘That is fucked, man.’_

_‘What about you then?’_

_‘I’m doubting the guidance councillor is going to sit me down and say that going on my personality and interests I should be a warlord, so I’ll probably get personal finance or real estate or something else criminal but at once slightly lame,’_ she answered _._ Phillippe had been sure she was speaking in incongruity until she continued with a concern he too shared, ‘ _But like … we are still going to take Latin together no matter what, right?’_

In a sense had both had both since meet expectation and seen their actual ambitions fulfilled – Phillippe of course, did not cut quite as dashing a figure as the he romanticised when he was ten and fourteen (having long since lost his hair and having gained a bit of a belly of recent during a staggered series of lockdowns in which he had been only too happy to take part); and Johanna, while not exactly a warlord in her own right, was wising up to the fact that she presently being patronised and dismissed by one, which had to account for something.

“Don’t worry yourself with this. I will find them, congratulate young Frederick on his successes, and make comfortable small talk with his guardian until the competition resumes. It serves no one to provoke someone so keen on aggression,” Adil continued, presumably assured or at least capable of portraying as much.

“I mean that is pretty much what all of Europe said when Bismarck took office and that worked out for exactly no one,” Johanna said flatly in response. “No … no, we are doing this my way, I just need a moment to collect my thoughts.”

“And what might those be?” her perhaps-lover pressed.

“My sister-in-law has been taken to hospital, my mind is,” Johanna sighed, “if you can buy me a few minutes, I’ll get it together enough to pay you back in all of the world’s riches, but I – I, I should ring my mum – get her perspective, probably best to do that before I go into a bathroom stall and just _scream_ as I will certainly need to after the fact,” she seemed to calculate against herself, “but I can’t, I can’t deal with the commissioner just yet. I don’t have it within me to sell a lie when circumstance forces engagement with life.”

“Constance? Stan – she’s not -” Phillippe’s silence broke, as did his voice when he dared ask. How could he have imagined that this was about him? Was he truly so self-absorbed that the not in itself insignificant detail of his worst imaginings had not fully factored into his considerations?

He hazarded a glance in the direction of his friend’s children, still dutifully buried in their workbooks (and likely bickering accordingly as siblings did) and felt a pang of worry shoot through him – what would become of them should they be orphaned by the pandemic?

He knew the answer as soon as he formulated his concern into question.

Constance had designated John to be her children’s legal caregiver years before as in some romantic notion of death she thought that her little one’s should have the benefit of being raised by the nearest ersatz to herself as she could find within the scope of their extended family. She had, of course, since committed a crime by writing a diagnosis she was not qualified to issue against her former brother-in-law and John had since failed to make anything of himself in accordance with the same scheme. Phillippe doubted, however, that throughout any of this Constance had enough belief in her own mortality to have bothered making any changes to her last will and testament.

If John would up with the legal responsibility for three young children, he would likely drop out of school altogether which would be something of a shame, though Phillippe could easily imagine him gaining the gig-economy for a time, at least when he still had something of his own youth the propel him in the hustle. The more likely outcome of this, however, would be that his mother would sue for custody and the whole family would find itself inflamed in arguments that for years had been waiting in ember, ultimately burning young Eleanor, Alix and Arthur whatever tact was employed to shield them from further uncertainty.

“I don’t know,” Johanna shook her head. “I really don’t. John just called me, and you know how erratic he gets when met with matters that can on be discussed in conjecture. Stan is in hospital, that is all I really know for certain at the point, and, yeah, I know it doesn’t serve us to speculate, but at the same time I have to meet a series of ‘ifs’ with ‘thans’ and – shit,” she cursed, perhaps having arrived at the same generalised conclusions of a worst-case scenario. “Shit!”

“Johanna,” Phillippe said in a slightly lower voice than his standard, “listen to me – you can’t call your mother. No matter what, you can’t do that until we have seen the will and have figured out conditions under which Constance’s last wishes can be carried out without causing detriment to those meant to do so and her children, whom I too only want to see prosper. Your mother doesn’t always think about the ways in which her … we will call them ‘protective’ instincts are bound to play out. I know I have given you very little reason to trust me of late, but can you at least trust that I know the legal code and the arguments attorneys use to bend it to their clients’ interests? Let me help you stop any of that before it be given a chance to start,” he bade her.

At this, Adil gave his shoulder a slight tap as though he meant to check him. Phillippe lifted his gaze from Johanna to her client-groom and had a mind to tell him that if anyone here needed to step off it was him, but Adil then gave a nod and narrowed his eyes at something in the distance. Phillippe turned around to find Kamil and Frederick walking towards them as quickly as etiquette permitted them to with di Segni following a few paces behind, forbidding the lads their comradery. Shit, Phillippe thought, trying to calculate what he could do to manage the situation he had created against all of the realities it fostered.

“I can’t do this,” Johanna swallowed.

“Just keep saying that,” Phillippe ordered. “Just exactly that. Di Segni will fill in the rest as it suits him and trust me when I say it suits your cause to project yourself as having doubts.”

Phillippe knew di Segni better than he would have liked without really knowing him at all. Their CVs read much the same and had Phillippe lacked the secular experiences that gave his life some structure outside of the scope of his office, he would probably been able to execute the same calculated ruthlessness that saw his superior to such rank, but then, this was perhaps wishful thinking on his part. Di Segni was merely five years his senior but had behaved since the onset of his employment in the public sector as though he were an old, cigar comping political insider dictating terms in realpolitik to elected officials in smoke-filled backrooms, though his function and the means by which he actualised it were hardly worthy of the analogy his phrasing suggested on its own merits. He sat at a desk squinting at lines of legal code in order to call into contempt anyone who unwittingly threatened his agenda -which itself seemed to be doing everything to prove that ‘united in diversity’ was oxymoronic and suggested in it an ideology that the body he served actively existed to suppress.

If school-aged children in Rome were made to pen twenty-five words on their future prospects, he could imagine di Segni having written the same as he had with the difference being that his true ambition would have been to be Pope, but being that he hoped to exercise actual power in an increasingly secular Europe, his only hope of fulfilling this ambition was to sit himself in Belgium from where he could properly issue interdicts to consequence without fear of any political reprisal.

From what little Phillippe knew about his personal life, di Segni had arrived at much the same place as he presently found himself without executing much effort of his own to do so – he was raising a child (though not his own – Phillippe could not help but to think his boss had never known carnal pleasure nor been much interested it), attended mass as often as he might (though in prayer and surely not in penitence as Phillippe did), held a dangerous number of self-confirming biases (that came out in otherwise polite conversation), and was even beginning to grow blad for his efforts (though, unlike Phillippe whose hairline had receded until he had done the rest of nature’s work with a beard trimmer, di Segni had a monkish circle on the back of his head that his hight made easy to ignore, especially given that his brown locks were otherwise uncommonly thick.)

Phillippe reasoned quickly that between an entrepreneur in the midst of a personal crisis, a Muslim warlord without a tap into the region’s oil, and a pointless (yet overpowered) government employee like himself, he stood personally the best shot at getting di Segni to back down from his designs. He knew his present enemy, at least, he recognised that they two shared a goodly amount of the same core values. He knew that all ideals were fleeting in the face of material concerns.

“Listen,” Phillippe continued frantically to Johanna as the boys hastened in their approach to being just out of earshot, “you don’t need to bring my boss to heel, you wouldn’t be able to do so even if you were at your best, which isn’t an affront on you or your particular skill set – trust me,” he tried to adjust, “the notion that I’ve never done anything to warrant your graces has filled many an hour on a therapist’s couch – but di Segni just doesn’t give a shit about the whims of pretty girls with famous names no matter how much they live up to them. Adil was right in what he said to me before, it is realpolitik for him, if he has made a decision he won’t be dissuaded from it, everything he encounters be it in support or opposition or complete indifference is just a corroborative bias, and that is exactly what you need to roll here if you want to stay in this game.” He paused, noting Adil’s want to object. “I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons.”

“This fails to surprise,” Adil remarked with a certain condescension Phillippe was given to imagining was the core of the man’s ethos.

“I mean, to be fair, so do I,” Johanna shrugged in Phillippe’s defence. He did not have time to outwardly appreciate the gesture when he felt so called upon to be at his worst. Johanna had teased him when he felt shy about buying his first pack of rubbers since his university days that he came off as a religious conservative in any scenario in which he was not being directly compared with his superior, but Phillippe thought it was well within his skillset to challenge this assertion – di Segni could use his position to create the economic conditions to extend an existing conflict in an oil rich region? Well, Phillippe reasoned, he could well take the Cross by comparison! This, of course, was merely to say that he could escape a domestic conflict in which he surely would not be victorious in exchange frivolous protections which would ultimately do little against the economic wastes of fear and ego as those remembered as devout had done. He was a midlevel government functionary. He was good at exactly this kind of thing. But fuck, Phillippe reasoned, if he pulled this one off, he might bloody well be canonised.

“Adil,” he ordered, “recite some version of your treatise on political geography and the European practice of this imposing a sense of diaspora on … God, is it racist if I say ‘tribes’?” he fretted fleetingly. “I suppose it is not important – just say to Johanna while she is clearly upset what you said to me but do so in your native tongue because my soon to be ex-boss genuinely is _that_ guy. Just play along with it. If we can convince him he has everything figured out, he won’t expect the much darker truth governing my initial moves and motives in all of this and we will be able to find him off guard eventually.”

“And what is the truth?” Adil narrowed his gaze.

Phillippe swallowed, reasoning it was best to be entirely honest now when the opportunity was still present to him. “That I didn’t want to go into work for a hearing because I didn’t really much feel like leaving the house, and I just played on perceived prejudice thinking I would make an easy job of it and clock out by noon,” he answered with some hesitation, worried that doing so would deny him the collaboration he was presently counting on. As he waited for Adil to respond, he found himself gaming out a counter narrative in which the man disgusted and with no mind for theatre simply took his leave. He could then make a show of comforting Johanna, say something vaguely Islamophobic and tell her she was better off – except Kamil might challenge the premise and ask questions whose answers did not concern him and oh! Why had he not been clever enough to come up with something redeemable in the face of such enquiries? Why had he not simply called in with the excuse that his son was at risk that had served him so well for so long now that he-

“You know … I actually respect that,” Adil nodded before turning to Johanna with what Phillippe could only imagine was the same rhetoric he employed while being introduced to his intended’s best-friend-by-default; whose son used while otherwise indulging his mate’s very German coffee and cake habit (whilst letting the other boy think himself cool by virtue of having a number of those Turkdeutsch rappers who only seemed to be able to spit rhyme about cocaine on his playlist); and whose daughter did a version of this, too before the right-honourable members of the United States Congress only with buzz words the scanned with the Fox-News audience. Phillippe hoped if the wedding was in fact to transpire that Johanna would find someone else to stand as her witness if such were to be the conversation of the bridal table, which he expected it would as these people had but one cord to strum between them.

“Please can you not do this here!” Phillippe hissed. “You are making a scene and I will permit no one to cause my friend such a humiliation.” In truth he had no idea what had been spoken and would not have understood its finer paints even if he spoke Arabic or the local dialect his admitted ignorance of the region confused into the tongue. What language did Adil speak in anger? Or when he tucked his children into bed? Or told a joke? Or quizzed the benefactors of blatant nepotism on geography? Phillippe reasoned that he should know the answers to these questions and would probably have done well to skim a few Buzz Feed articles about the man before setting him up in a marriage plot that might well spell the end of the European Union.

Whatever he said, Johanna clearly understood at least the gist.

“How very dare you!” she shouted, taking a step back from her intended. “I _loved_ you!”

“You _deceived_ me!” Adil accused at the same volume. If meant to be or not, in this moment, they were truly perfect, Phillippe thought before meeting his boss with a bewildered look. Form the corner of his eye, he saw that the two lads were contented with the distraction the afternoon offered, taking the cake samples Adil had brought in a Tupperware container from the table as they continued to talk about another competitor’s presentation.

Johanna, as though she took no notice of extended company, continued in her tirade. “Yes, Adil, it is _literally_ my job to lie to mass swathes of people and I get paid a shit ton of money to do so. You knew that when we met, in fact it is _why_ we met, so don’t you dare presume-”

“If you ever felt the way you claim however remotely, why did I have to find out through what amounts to a declaration of holy war?”

Oh, bless, Phillippe thought. Whether he spoke Kurdish or Arabic or some other forging tongue at home, he had even picked up on the language requirements of this engagement. A glance at di Segni told him the man was sold on the premise at least – now to just find a way to work his prejudices into an argument against his own practices.

“Because diplomacy is just a delay tactic!” Johanna said, giving away some of the ground she had won them, “Stop trying to construct a narrative in which the world adheres to certain rules and accept reality for what it is,” she bade Adil. “Had I in any way acted on my own initiative we would be in the same situation and you know that so how dare you name me a coward when you share at least half of the blame that might be attributed to us – ergo, exactly none of it because the only reason Europe is in this crisis is because di Segni is brilliant at his job and Capet here is absolute shite at his,” she gestured with a sweep of her arm.

“I don’t know that I would be that harsh,” di Segni injected, patting Phillippe once between his shoulder blades in a manner that sent a shiver though his spine, doing even less to convey support when he continued “your … friend managed to fulfil his objective, he was just unfortunate enough to fall on his own sword in the process, or on Richard Plantagenet’s, rather. Worry not, Phillippe, I’ll ensure your pending assignment does not afford you the same potential for humiliating the integrity of this department, or yourself.”

Phillippe knew it would do no present good to object to this charge outright. Before it could come to a hearing, he would find a way to reach out to Ingeborg and explain that his reactions in her regard had only been the result of his disengaged designs not to cause her any direct, personal offence – that he simply did not know her well enough to tell her that she had terrible breath and had stopped talking to her for that reason. John had taken advantage of an opportunity her showing up at his flat presented to score a hit against his brother and frame it as Brexit politics, when in truth he was simply a thread in a wide tapestry of sibling rivalries. He should have said something to her on their date. He should have, at the very latest, told her the truth when she showed up at his home unannounced, for certainly he did not want to put as much on public record transcripts. He could not swear to Christ and the court anything but the truth – but she could have Canute drop the charges altogether if he wanted to protect her from centuries of historians having a laugh over the fact that a bridge tunnel eroded because she could not bother herself to floss. He was not in any sort of relationship with Richard – but he did not want to be in one with her, either. For the moment though, it did not matter one way or the other what Lotario dei Conti di Segni thought.

“Oh, my fucking God, I can’t believe you just made a dick joke,” Frederick choked on his laughter and the bite of cake he had been sampling.

“What an accusation! What blasphemy!” di Segni shifted abruptly, practically ravenous as he continued to address his ward, “Frederick, apologise for your insolence this instance. Your blessed mother would turn in her grave if she heard such notions leave your lips.”

“Um,” Frederick elongated. “Are you talking Paternosters, or do you mean for me to say sorry to this lot for voicing the thought we all shared?” he asked, unperturbed by the threat of reprisal or the religious language it took.

“Amen,” Adil said dryly. Phillippe fought the urge to smile until it occurred to him that his boss would not be able to tell either way.

“Is it still cool if I have a few of the cake samples?” Frederick asked. Adil gave him a wink, took the plastic container from his own son, and proceeded to hand it to the German as though he intended it to be a reminder of the points total displayed on the auditorium doors.

“Baba!” Kamil complained. “That is not fair, I haven’t -”

“I think you’ll find that life rarely is, although it is always just.”

Phillippe did not know if he would agree with the statement if he were to afforded it more than a passing thought, but Kamil, for his part, did not seem to put much value into furthering his protest and decided to seek out approval from an adult he thought might be better posed to sway his father’s opinion. “Why are you crying?” he asked Johanna in a poorly disguised attempt to covey concern in order to build on an alliance. Phillippe wondered if he still thought she was a djinn who could grant him a simple wish or just a particularly good negotiator who could do the same with as little conscious. 

“Why am I crying? Because your father confuses policy for politics and conflates both with that which exists between us and now it seems that I perhaps overestimated his intellect in such regards.”

“I might say the same,” Adil accused, shifting apologetically, “But that … that is an obstacle, it is not the end. Grownups fight Kamil, usually about the news ticker because we are afraid of putting words to our feelings as this often amounts to blame that we are cautious to assign as it is often unfair to. It is something you will understand when you are older.”

Christ have Mercy, Phillippe thought. Naturally, he wanted his friend to be in a happy, healthy relationship if she were truly interested in pursuing one – he just did not want this for her in the exact moment he was attempting to play on the prejudices of a third party. Johanna looked at Adil as though he had spoken to some deep truth within her when all he had really done was put words to the ways most adult relationships tended to manifest. Nothing this man said carried anything in the way of wisdom within it, he just stated the obvious with an accent. Phillippe wondered if he might do better for himself outside of Paris where standard French was taken for seduction in itself, but remembered in the same moment that he had not a foreign language to fall back on having dropped English as an elective to focus on Latin because a younger Johanna had assured him on word of her elder siblings that the upper levels were just an excuse to read erotic poetry and look smarter for it. Yet another count to hold against her at present. How easy it was to resent the whole lot of them.

“I mean … _sounds fake_ , like most of this frankly,” Frederick gave, “but if you are going to go to marry as a matter of policy independent of all of the romantic poetry you managed to recite in a tirade, I’d go with the lemon curd.”

“Nice punning there,” Kamil snickered, joined by Frederick a few moments before the joke landed on Phillippe, desperate as he was to move his boss into the defence and calculating his next move.

“Is it halal?” di Segni asked of the cake sample in hiss Phillippe did not know if he should better attribute to the man’s known distance for anything catering to people whose beliefs differed from his own or the general difficulty romantic speakers had with pronouncing a hard-H sound. He glanced quickly to Adil, wondering if he had come on a better strategy by playing at peace. Certainly there was evidence that di Segni resented the fact that his little prodigy got on with Kamil Ayyub as a well as any two poorly socialised prepubescents whose parents pushed them into achieving academic excellence might, and perhaps Adil meant to exploit this to some end. Phillipe bit his lip, not sure of what to make of it.

“Far worse. It is organic, fair trade, sustainable, locally sourced, vegan and the confiserie itself is owned by a woman of colour who employs and apprentices individuals with developmental disabilities. You know how white people be though - pun genuinely not intended - but they just eat that shit up,” Kamil claimed – however correctly. Oh right, Phillippe thought. Owing to his age, Kamil could get away with making statements about privilege which pretended race was the only factor that any reasonably worldly adult would shy from. Di Segni was the sort who would agree that opening opportunity to women, minorities, and other people who had a claim on a history of systemic oppression was an affront to traditional values. As such, Phillippe felt sure he would find his moment in the organic exchange as easily as he would have his efforts done more to invent the same circumstance.

“I think he was asking if you and your dad are still Muslim,” Frederick corrected with some measure of embarrassment, giving his guardian a wayward glance.

“Do conservatives not think that Muslims should get to eat cake at their weddings?” Kamil frowned, seeming genuinely perplexed if not particularly offended. “I thought they just that that about gays.”

“No,” Frederick shook his head, “for reasons I can’t understand as church tithes are taken from pre-taxed income, Pops here thinks Miss Plantagenet should be excommunicated.”

“It is Canon Law,” di Segni told his ward in warning.

“I mean … maybe? It is poor economic policy though if you think about it for half a sec,” Frederick challenged. “The Plantagenets have fuck-you-money one would think the Vatican would want to claim a chunk of, regardless of what they have going on secularly.”

“I don’t really _pay_ taxes though, so make of that what you will,” Johanna shrugged.

“Charitable endeavours or off-shore shell companies?” Adil inquired.

“Bit of both and a lot of neither. If one is willing to fly into a war zone, pretty much anything can be written off as ‘operational expenditure’.”

“That is somehow brilliant.”

“I mean it is _not_ ,” Johanna rolled her eyes, “it is _bureaucratic_ -”

How could anyone get on with being so honest in any respect?

“It is my fault, all of it,” Phillippe interrupted before his friend and her fiancé could find common ground with the commissioner on a monetary basis, “if anyone should be excommunicated as a result of this farce, tis I. Were that this Milano wool a hairshirt, I would wear it for the rest of my days for that which I have wrought,” he declared. “Your excellency,” he addressed di Segni directly, though the noun admittedly hinted at sarcasm in such a setting, “I fear I must confess, I only came to you with the rumour of my friend’s impending nuptials in hopes that such would rid me of a sin I cannot escape, and yet it seems that all of Europe is to incur God’s wrath for the shape of my desires, and my punishment is so minuscule when one considers the crime.”

“Not to play devil’s advocate when it is clearly not my place,” Kamil broke in, “but one, Johanna and my dad make each other ridiculously happy, two,” he shifted to his father, “like I know it has only been Corona for months now which is probably why you’ve latched on to this maintenance project to such an extent, but the US is going to vote on Tuesday, the British Justice Ministerium is talking about reinstating the death penalty, and the World Cup is going to be held in Qatar next winter with all of the self-serving activism I’m sure that will entail, so there will be a lot more actual news on the horizon to argue about if that is how you think you need to cloak your feelings for one another. And three,” he turned back to Phillippe, “you can’t _actually_ be fired or demoted or whatever for your sexual preference. There are laws against that kind of thing. I can’t name them chapter and verse but I am sure a bureaucrat as otherwise seeped in liturgy as you present yourself surely does.”

“You are not mistaken. I could fight any attempts to transfer me but what would be the point?” Phillippe responded, continuing his show of histrionics which he had not otherwise had to employ since studying law. If di Segni caught on to the fact that this was all an act, so much the better – the commissioner was the one of trial, after all.

“To interject,” di Segni spoke calmly, “Whatever this is that Monsieur Capet seems to have you all roped into … I’m not suggesting he should put in for reassignment due to his sexual preference. The fact of the matter is that prosecution has named him as a witness in a pending case and it would be unethical for him to continue serving in his same capacity. At the same time, it would be a shame were his talents - for what they are - to go to waste so long as matters are being held up in litigation.”

Phillippe shook his head with a show of shame, still pleading, he continued, “Sir, you should know that I would be prepared to go on the record -”

“Stop graveling,” di Segni sneered, having lost all interest in the pretence of pleasantries. “If you must know, Capet, my problem both professionally and on a personal level is that you are inconsistent and apologetic when you think it suits you. Had you any honour of which to speak, we would not be answering to such charges!”

“Wouldn’t we, Sir?” Phillippe countered. “If I seem ‘inconsistent’, it is only that I was previously ignorant to your designs and surely would have objected had I been consulted in any meaningful way. You intend to negate the economic cost to the Union that comes with the loss of England by positioning France and Germany to profit directly from the stabilisation of the cost of crude oil, thus securing the commission’s budget and creating a temporary benefit to all of remaining Europe via allocation, but are these gains not themselves too insignificant for what you mean to gamble in the process? Sir,” he leaned in, “if Saudi Arabia sees a surplus, this will be funnelled into organised terror and I _know_ that you know this – I mean, I don’t to be fair, really know enough about the present situation in the Middle East to draw conclusions based on it, but I know the EU: Under Marcon, France doesn’t have an answer to militant Islam as it manifests on our streets, but do you really suspect he will stay in office if such persists?” he pressed. “What do you imagine would happen if Austria or one of the Scandinavian countries who are happy for any reason to close their boarders are put under attack? I’d imagine Kurz would not find much in the way of opposition if he were to move for an ‘Aust-a-la-vista’, and whomever inherits Merkel’s seat next October will be far less sympathetic to Brussels than Berlin has otherwise been over the past two decades. You plan isn’t bad in itself, but the timing is awful. Back down,” Phillippe cautioned.

“You’ve yourself insured this outcome with your damned queer bedroom conspiracies,” di Segni slighted. “This was _never_ my plan.”

“I assure you my sex life isn’t all as interesting as you make out, but now I have two highly esteemed witnesses to your homophobia and … this taken with eight months’ worth of emails ordering me to make sure this maintenance project gets held up in litigation, I’m sure the courts would be interested in seeing the rest of your correspondence, which I am sure would support my theory. Would you then be in a position to swear on a Bible that this was not your intention all along?”

“Credible witnesses,” di Segni snorted. “Don’t presume to threaten me with your interpretation of God’s Will.”

“Oh, don’t mistake me, I share your sentiments with regard to Adil and the entire Ayyub clan, but the fact of the matter is, “ Phillippe continued, gesturing to Johanna, he has _such_ a good PR team behind him -whatever you many otherwise think of women- that I honestly had to struggle to remember as we two conversated that his brother’s armies are half responsible for the refugee crisis plaguing Europe, which, I fear it has to be said for the sake of balance, our economic and energy policies have made inevitable in some form.”

“I want you out of my office. Clean out your desk before business resumes on Monday,” di Segni sneered.

“Call your solicitor,” Phillippe smiled, knowing he had gotten to him. It was a pity that his boss could not see the challenge in order to react to it in similarly overblown fashion before storming off, presumably to take him up on his advice for once. “Johanna,” Phillippe turned, wanting to enjoy every last moment he could of heroism before doubts over the actually repercussions of this exchange as they pertained to his continued employment set in, “you can go take care of the ‘ifs’ and ‘thans’ as they relate to your family – I’ll watch to make sure that the kids remain behaved and bored beyond their darkest imaginings and take them back to mine for the evening.”

“I thought you had a thing?” Johanna made a courtesy show of protesting. He could tell she was smiling beneath her mask

“I thought you had a birthday,” Phillippe countered.

“Okay … but can we talk about this for a sec? What you just did was amazing,” Kamil exclaimed. “I never would have guessed you to have the gall.”

Phillippe felt himself beginning to blush. He had not really done anything outside of his standard of telling convenient lies and hoping that no one listening was all that interested in fact checking him on any of it, the only bit of innovation he had come on was sacrificing himself as the subject of assumption. He wondered how Richard – who had taken such care to let him down gently – would meet a furtherance of the rumour John had seen start of their being in an extended, clandestine affair, how John would react to the same news and if he stood a chance of telling Ingeborg the truth about his series of seeming faux pas before whatever beliefs she presently held were cemented. So much for the thoughts of heroism. At least, Phillippe ventured, if Johanna left the kids to his care he would have an excuse to cancel with Agnes that did not amount to a painful ‘this is just kind of who I am as a person.’

“It really was,” Adil consented, “if he isn’t willing to step off, his legal team will certainly advise him to.”

“I’m still laughing over ‘Aust-a-la-vista’,” Frederick smiled. Phillippe nodded, taking a small comfort in finally having been able to use a pun he had been sitting on for months.

“Frederick, cease fraternising!” di Segni shouted at his ward from before the auditorium doors.

“I can afford to,” the lad laughed, “I’m winning!”

“89 points out of a possible hundred isn’t winning!”

“It is when my closest competitor has accrued a grand total of 72,” Frederick rolled his eyes. “Anyway,” he shouted back, “Johanna used to be married to my cousin, she is about to be married to Adil and Capet is in a committed if clandestine relationship to her brother, so we are all family here. It is okay, social distance is secured.”

Great, Phillippe thought, so now a congregation of polymaths whose names he would not know and who likely had not taken much note of his thought he was queer. Worse yet, people he had begun to know on some personal level seemed happy to accept the same as being true.

“You are free to stay, Frederick, but I’m about to publicly disown my son though for being so flippant in academia, so that presents some problem to your wider argument, I’d imagine.”

“Baba, that isn’t fair -” Kamil began to whine.

“Numbers only lie when pollsters are involved, Kamil,” Adil dismissed. “We have been through this. There is no such thing as second place,” the man destined to eternally play that role to his brother claimed.

“Except there _is_ because that is how ordinal numbers _work!”_ Kamil yelled.

“Hey,” Johanna said, kneeling down to meet her perhaps-lover’s son. “Come take a walk with me real quick? I want to tell you a secret.”

“That my father loves me and my sister equally and only pushes us so hard because he wants that we should make full advantage of the opportunities open to us that we might be able to open more for those we will one day lead as is the dream of every parent?” Kamil murmured, clearly already ashamed of his outburst.

“No. Don’t be ridiculous. I said a ‘secret’, not something that you are already conscious enough of to internalise,” she winked. “Numbers lie all the fucking time. You can still win this thing. C’mon -”

“Wait,” Phillippe stopped them, wanting to clear the air of the lies he told to cause di Segni to second-guess himself. She had the right instincts and motives (probably), but this was far more important. “I’m … you all know I’m not actually attracted to Richard, I was merely presently enough of what my boss – former boss? – believes to be truth to force him to accept the validity of an argument he would not otherwise be willing to acknowledge.”

“Really? I think you two are well-matched,” Adil parroted. Phillippe met him with a dark glare.


	9. Architecture and Allocation

Richard Plantagenet had entered his flat with an out of place apology and ridged posture, unwilling to make eye contact when he took a seat at the dining room table, barely touching breakfast when he was served. Constance’s three children accepted his presence with a cold distance, little Alix eventually inquiring after Phillippe instructed them to go pack their things where her Aunt Johanna and Uncle John respectively where, slamming her plate down when it became apparent that Uncle Richard, at least, was unwilling to give them a straight answer, inquiring then further why they could not just stay here so long as their mother was in hospital. Richard had, for his part, answered this request with an assumption regarding Phillippe’s broadband connection not having the capacity to both allow him to work uninterrupted whilst four children attend online lecture on their laptops and tablets. To this, Phillippe had sheepishly replied that he was presently between employments, at least, between assignments or offices, a statement which seemed to cause Richard some measure of satisfaction he was able to contain with a simple reply of “then we certainly would not want to put you out.”

Phillippe felt his spine straighten when they children left the table complaining that their fun had ended, Richard’s eyes continuing to dance around the room, electing to mark every detail of the place save for its present inhabitant.

“Richard,” Phillippe swallowed, “I’m sorry for my role in all that has recently transpired. Had I but known -”

“Who was the interior architect tasked to this project?” Richard interrupted.

“You mean my home?” Phillippe clarified, himself suddenly conscious of the contradictions inlayed in his exposed beams, the industrial iron details of the windows and lighting fixtures as combined with the space’s modern layout and colour-scheme his late wife had selected. Was this how Richard was plotting his retaliation? Phillippe worried that a painted wall, or the tiles in the kitchen or water closet, or some other small altercation to make the former workhouse feel more like a home violated some historical consideration though he had himself been rather conscious and respectful of local building code in each project of his own undertaking. “I’m really not sure," he answered after taking pause, "my late wife and I inherited the space from her uncle, and she was responsible for most of the decorating. Um. It is probably stated on the lease, I could obtain it if -”

“It has a lot of character,” Richard nodded as though he meant to indicate that he approved. “Just … not what I would have expected from you.”

“Oh,” Phillippe murmured, not sure how he was meant to respond.

“From the post code,” Richard adjusted quickly as though he hoped to make clear he had not meant to issue personal offence by way of another small slight.

“Well, we can’t all have sprawling chateaus in Poitiers,” Phillippe answered with a sense of injury.

“Few would be able to bring such subtle charm to such a dreary city as ‘bonne’ Paris,” Richard assured him with a casual smile that quickly vanished into further professional considerations. “Yes, if you can find the name of your interior architect, I’d be interested to know it, I’ve all but lost myself in his or her work and I have a few projects in mind that would benefit from such an eye for making history aesthetically accessible. Might I trouble you for a tour of the rest of your flat?”

Phillippe blinked. In truth Richard had already seen most of his eighty-two metres squared. “Not at all, I mean – you have seen the kitchen, the dining area, the living room – I’ll apologise in advance is also in something of a state,” he explained quickly, “I gave my bed to Eleanor and Alix last night, slept on the sofa and didn’t manage to put the cushions on the back of it after I woke up, not knowing what the plan for today was or thinking that you would be coming around full stop. Say," he shifted, "where is Johanna?”

“I came insted for I wanted to see you,” Richard said, “Firstly to thank you personally for stepping in the way you did yesterday, and … to continue a conversation I’d mistaken as having concluded last week on the phone. Is there somewhere private you and I might retreat to?”

Phillippe bit his lip as he considered what was being asked. “I think one of the girls is taking a shower in my personal bathroom, so my room is off limits. I could put a film on for the kids and we could go into Louis’ camp as it were -”

“Camp?” Richard raised an eyebrow.

“We built a tent from bedsheets and fairy lights. It _was_ a fort, but last night he and Atty decided that it is a ship and they, in turn, are pirates, so it might prove a difficult vessel to seize,” he smiled, then frowned when it occurred to him how much of a dork he must have sounded in that statement.

Phillippe’s mind quickly raced to recall and analyse each and every word he spoke since the impeccably dressed Richard had surprised him at his door, Phillippe still in his pyjama bottoms, an old collage sweatshirt that had grown slightly too snug over the series of lockdowns, and an apron that had done little to prevent him from being pratically covered in sugar, flour and the general stick of making waffle batter for and with children. Christ! He was such a mess.

In this thought the Parisian took off his glasses, suddenly conscious of the extent to which these, too, likely distracted from any impression he might hope to make (or rather recover), the nerd-frames several seasons out of fashion as they were. The action had the instant benefit of blurring Richard’s image to some extent. Phillippe, taking a small measure of confidence in being able to forget that he was seated across from the physical embodiment of a fairy-tale prince, commented as though out of hand, “Sorry, I realise that was a rather unbefitting turn of phrase,” in a deeper octane to that for which his voice was suited.

“Why are you glaring?” Richard wondered. “Phillippe … I don’t -ever, really – understand what I have done to incur your ire. I think it is sweet, the extent to which you encourage your son’s phantasy and I certainly did not mean to in some way suggest otherwise.”

“You didn’t … do anything,” Phillippe assured him as he put his glasses back on to avoid squinting. “I’m sorry, I just – I want us to be able to get on,” he said when what he meant was ‘I want you to like me better than I presently like myself.’

Richard nodded with a measure of empathy and concern as though he had somehow inferred the meaning. “Can we go somewhere where we might continue this conversation behind closed doors? I don’t have the natural talents that you do where children are concerned and to be honest, I am a bit anxious that I might say something that in fact needs to be said, but that I don’t want you to later have to explain to your son or my late brother’s brood in the event that we should be overheard. I know you to be … rather pious,” he said as thought this were a critique, “and imagine there are some realities you would prefer not to have the children exposed to.”

“I …don’t know what you are talking about,” Phillippe lied, half hoping against all of his morals that Richard had the intention of kissing him without abandon the instant they found themselves behind a lockable door.

“No, of course you don’t,” Richard murmured, rolling his eyes slightly as he took a last sip of coffee that had since grown cold. Phillippe looked away in shame, repeating a rosary in his mind as he stood, careful to hold in his stomach and create the illusion of a youthful physique much as he might, still hoping to meet with the unconscience approval of his guest.

Phillipe found Louis and Arthur playing with plastic dinosaurs he had never before seen when he opened the door to his son’s bedroom. Arthur hurried to assure his uncle that he was almost done packing and Louis began apologising that his room was in such a state, both of which Richard brushed off, asking if either of them had seen The Avengers. Before Phillippe could object, Arthur began explaining to Louis everything he knew of the film, alternating French and English words at random in his excitement which Louis quickly began to mimic.

“I’ll have to plug in the protection code,” Phillippe sighed, returning to the living room, folding his throw-blanket, and replacing the cushions on the sofa while he was there, if only to bide time.

Little Eleanor emerged from the kitchen in his disguarded apron, telling Phillippe as though she marked his hesitation that she had washed all of the dishes and wiped down the counters to boot but that she could not find a broom and could not finish packing (as she had been asked to, unlike the kitchen chores which she seemed to have self-assigned in her own want of delay) so long as her sister was in the bathroom, for her sleeping clothes and toiletries were inside.

Phillippe forced a smile, shook his head an assured her that she should relax and take her time; he and her uncle had to have an adult conversation and she could watch a movie whilst they convalesced.

Eleanor smiled, nodded as though she had taken a meaning that he wished she had not, pointed to her own face and told Phillippe he might want to first consult a mirror.

Sighing once more, Phillippe found in the one his late wife had hung behind the front door that he had a sprinkling of flour in his now four-day-beard (which he had been rather proud of before comparing it against Richard’s full, impeccably manicured statement of masculinity.) He could smell a trace of his guest’s cologne from the woollen overcoat that now hung on his coatrack, and Phillippe lifted his arms slightly to at least make sure he did not stink as his efforts to free his face of the ‘snowball fight’ he had forgotten in his stress that he had engaged in and encouraged came at no avail. At least his forty-eight-hour deodorant was up to task, he swallowed, finding himself at full liberty to dread everything else about the impression he had made.

Phillippe took one last glance at himself from top to toe, not liking what he saw any more than he ever had. He was unremarkable in every way; average hight, still slender though far from being considered fit, dressed like he supposed any other millennial would-be-hipster single-father might on a Sunday morning when he had not been expecting the company of a near stranger.

Phillippe had a sense of what Richard meant to say to him; he was not attracted to him, never had been and at the risk of sounding especially blunt had no interest in knowing him any more than he presently did, which was to say his name, his insignificant title and that his younger siblings with whom he was not especially close occasionally coveted his company.

What – Phillippe wondered – was he hoping for in contrary?

It was impossible, he reasoned, not to feel like an awkward, lanky, spot faced teenage boy who had not yet been able to put words to the questions he had around his own sexuality in Richard’s company, same as it was to fully be the adult who had answered any doubts his secret yearnings tried to suggest by denying them entirely. He tried to think of the Bible and its teachings, but this did little to quell the shame that the memory of his first kiss filled him with. He wished he had not lost his hair so young (perhaps in punishment for the thoughts that visited upon him during purberty.) He likewise wished that he had watched his diet a bit more closely in recent months, that he had a gym membership he could complain about not being able to use or at least enough expendable income to have been found wearing labels of the kind the filled his friends’ closets as opposed to a sweatshirt he had purchased whilst still attending his alma mater and a pair of faded pyjama trousers he had picked up from Primark in the same period.

It was not helping his confidence that his ‘date’ with Agnes the night before had turned out as it did. He called to explain that he could not take her on that date she was anticipating that evening giving a string of circumstances she did not seem to believe as he recited them, saying in response only that he would do better to save them both time by simply telling her he was not interested – and in hindsight, perhaps he should have.

Instead, Phillippe had ordered her take away from his favourite restaurant, baked a cake with her with the kids and sent this, too, along with a candle and its silver holder to the address he had been given curtesy of Uber, texting her after he had gotten notification that it had arrived with a few pictures of himself and the children during the desert’s construction and a short message that he really had wanted to take her out, but he hoped she had enjoyed the ersatz he had found in extenuating circumstances or at least found it within her to accept that his intentions towards he were honest and to accept his form of apology for how the evening had manifested outside of his control.

It was all well and good, or had been except for the small fact that these intentions he claimed were not honest in the slightest, as Phillippe was coming to internalise -

as he had realised nearly the moment that he had hung up with her the night prior, again when he woke up to the same empty feeling that had plagued him nearly every day of his adult life, again when he opened the door to Richard only to have his heart betray him in its sudden, desperate yearning for anything to transpire from the man’s sudden appearance at his doorstep.

Agnes had texted him back immediately after receiving his date to-go, asking to ring when he found time. Phillippe did so after putting the children to sleep, having the kind of inuendo-laden conversation he had half anticipated after telling her she need not apologise for not believing him about his reasons for cancelling last minute (in her position he would have thought the same), laughing at the jokes he expected she might tell to try to break the ice and offering the witty responses he had prepared to the questions he had spent weeks imagining she might ask.

It was perfect. She was perfect, or at least she might have been, were they two not at completely different stages in their lives.

Then there was the larger problem, the problem that time would likely have a harder time of sorting – he simply was not romantically attracted to her in the slightest, much as he thought he would like to have her as a close friend, much as he tried to will himself to wanting what he was culturally conditioned to think of as somehow being ‘more.’

In stark contrast, Phillippe felt over excited for every second Richard could bother himself to glance in his direction over breakfast.

It was wrong. All of it. And Richard was going to tell him as much, and Phillippe was going to do his part in pretending he had no idea what he was referring to and they would both go their own separate ways and in time he would simply forget it – probably not with Agnes, whom he liked to well to deceive the way he had become so accustom to deceiving himself and the vengeful God to whom he prayed, but perhaps with Ingeborg, whom he considered could not do better for herself than being the object of his penance any way he looked at it.

Yes, Phillippe resolved as he returned to his son’s room, that would prove a course of action that would meet with everyone’s benefit.

Then he saw Richard reclining under his sheets, smiling, and inviting all of Phillippe’s better reason to take its leave.

“You forgot what the child-lock was, didn’t you,” Richard laughed, reclined in the tent or entangled in this ship's sail, his blazer removed as though he had made up his mind to stay.

“No, no its Louis’ birthday," Phillippe stammered, unable to find any breath in his lungs. "I just – Eleanor wanted to talk to me and … I’m sorry to have kept you waiting. What … what is it that you wanted to say?”

The invitation seemed to cause Richard hesitation. He pressed his lips together and ceased with eye contact. “I’ll confess, I thought we had had this conversation once prior, but being that my words failed to convey … I’m really not sure myself, but I’m fairly confident that I’ll do no better job at arriving on any set phrases no matter how much time I am allowed to ponder them, so … why don’t you take a seat?” he gestured, commenting, “Impressive, what you built here.”

“I took my inspiration from your brother John," Phillippe told him, hoping to find some sense of commonality. "He was here watching Louis a few weeks back and erected something similar in the living room. I just rebuilt it and added some shine.”

“Mmm,” Richard nodded to himself, seeming slightly put off by the explanation for reasons Phillippe struggled to place.

“Did I say something wrong?” Phillippe wondered after Richard let surrender half a minute to the silence that separated them.

“When you write your epic romances,” Richard swallowed, still refusing to look at him, “or just in general when you go about your day, do other people’s perspectives on whatever matter occur to you or is that outside of your cognitive abilities? Not that intend that to be as demeaning as I am sure it just came across; I am just trying to understand your mindset a bit better.”

“You are asking if I am autistic?” Phillippe grasped, “Or 'on the spectrum' or whatever the politically correct way of acknowledging that I’ve repeatedly made an arse of myself without assigning blame is?”

“In too many words, perhaps,” Richard acknowledged with some measure of discomfort. “Phillippe, I don’t quite know how you came on the idea that I overstepped certain boundaries when you were a boy, and if my actions carried in themselves suggestions which I would have never intended that served to damage you or your sense of self in some way, I can only apologise by way of trying to explain my intentions insofar as I recall them. I don’t … really know how to put this without inviting the risk of you taking some measure of embarrassment or offence, but you … you were quite ill that evening, what is more, you were victim to a plumbing disaster and because my mum couldn’t reach yours, she set you up in my bedroom instead of Geoffrey’s or John’s for the sole reason that it was in the basement, out of the pathway of party guests, plumbers and the like.”

Phillippe bit his bottom lip, humiliated at the imagine of his younger self that Richard so delicately offered - a boy who had been so sick in the bowels that he had literally covered an entire water closet with his semifluid facial matter shortly before their first meeting of memory or note. Phillippe was not certain if Richard had had a look at him before he had had a shower, but he was certain that he must have seen the toilet and how, he wondered, had this much never occurred to him in the weeks he spent analysing the kiss after it had occurred.

Except that it was not a kiss.

No. It never had been. Same as Phillippe had never been particularly attractive or deserving of affection as Richard continued to make clear.

“After everything was more or less over,” he relayed to him as politely as possible, “I went down to grab my sleeping bag and, on the way, thought to bring you water and salted crackers - having then recently been dehydrated myself while camping, not wanting you to be exposed to the same risk,” he paused, almost to complain, “certain that is the sort of detail that would not have factored into my parents’ attempts at damage control. If my lips grazed you in some way,” Richard readjusted, returning to his stern but gentle tone, “I can only imagine that I wanted to take your temperature because really Phillippe,” he frowned, “I am ten years your senior and that is a lot longer than a mere decade when one party is in puberty. I wouldn’t have been attracted to you at that point even if you hadn’t been sick in the bowels and honestly I am a bit offended by the accusation, even now fifteen years after the fact when I’ve only just learned of it.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Phillippe stammered, shocked at the extent of the allegation he had levied without offering any of it due consideration. He felt hideous at having held a false mirror for Richard’s considerations as he began to apricate the extent of his friends’ older brother’s clear discomfort around him. “I only -” he chocked, doubting that Richard would simply be able to shrug and dismiss him as Adil Ayyub had with the explanation that he had no real interest in leaving the house for a meeting that could likely have been accomplished with an email. “Richard, I’m mortified and, really, I’m so sorry,” he tried. Richard shook his head.

“And to that end,” the gorgeous blonde continued as though he hoped to recover by enacting some subtle measure of revenge, “if I were to have kiss you, it wouldn’t be my aim to lend to you such toxic thoughts about your own sexuality or any questions in kind. I believe in love, in _passion_ and I wouldn’t want you to suffer for years over what my intentions were. If I were to kiss you,” he again insisted, “I would want you to kiss me back, I would want to stand on a rooftop and proclaim the world for all of its beauty and I would you to want to do to do the same. I don’t know how you came on the idea you have of me and I don’t know how to correct it per se besides giving you my word as a gentleman - whether you will have it or not – that I’m not the predator you imagine me as.”

“I -I – I don’t. I just -” Phillippe flustered, hesitating to demand his guest make good on his threat. Richard Plantagenet, he reasoned, was not a predator, but by the same notion neither was he a good and decent man. He had dallied with Phillippe’s elder sister for a time, leaving her on a dancefloor with the promise of going to request her favourite song, only to spend the rest of the evening flirting with the DJ after he had spun it. He had come out a few weeks after that, hoping (as Geoffrey had then relayed it at lunch) to spark a fight with his parents which did not transpire in the way Richard envisioned but led to them separating when Eleanor later found Henry comforting a rejected Alys with his embrace.

Richard was himself married but wore no ring. He had met his wife at a conference after she had sent several drinks to his table from the bar and had barely begun the awkward explanation of why his affections would never so manifest when she allegedly interrupted him with, ‘ _yeah, I heard you don’t fancy sex with women. Here is the thing though – I very much do. That is … except for a small issue involving my inheritance. You see, my father has certain assumptions about my lifestyle causing him to withhold my trust fund and deny me my place on the board of directors in the corporation he founded, and … rumour has it that your business is struggling but that you’ve some moral obligation to accepting any of Daddy’s money to get you started, so I think we might be able to come to some mutually beneficial arrangement._ ’

Richard, as Johanna told it, said ‘ _yes_ ’ before Berengaria Jiménez had even offered her name (which Johanna herself never used, instead referring to the woman as ‘ _Legend_ ’ with alternating expletives acting as adjectives ( _‘fucking!’/’bloody!’/’bloody-fucking!’_ ) depending on how drunk she was relaying this story to allegorically ask when her own emotionally detached, independently wealthy prince would come.) To Phillippe’s mind though, Richard was simply using this woman, whom, (as he unfairly judged against feelings which he was too frightened to acknowledge) might be happier if she had found a way to live her truth more openly.

Then, Phillippe’s own record when it came to women was not much better. He was, after all, reconsidering his intentions towards Ingeborg – which was to say he was considering that they could exist, going so far as to evaluate that she deserved what might amount to a lifetime of his disinterest, that he himself deserved in turn a disguise he could put on in the form of a golden ring whenever he felt that he had not managed to internalise the teaching of Leviticus however much he might intellectually accept the limitations God placed on desire in chapter and verse.

Phillippe, had, however, loved his wife dearly, but had acknowledged to himself even within the scope of her too-short lifetime that they two only worked as a couple because he had been on the road so much for work. All the same, when Ysabeau died in his absence whilst bringing their twins into the world (however briefly) Phillippe resolved to never leave the side of anyone he had cause to cherish again so long as he himself lived and breathed. 

No, he thought better on it. Ingeborg was a harpy of the highest order but was by no means deserving of anticipations Phillippe doubted he would ever be inclined to fulfilling, for her, or Agnes, or anyone else foolish enough to imagine him worthy of their interests.

“Um,” Richard swallowed, encouraging him to continue.

Phillippe still was not exactly sure what he thought he had to say for himself, if there even was an explanation and if Richard had any right to ask for one. Was it not enough that he had offered a sincere apology?

“Look this is rather uncomfortable,” Phillippe said, “and I fear any explanation on my end is only going to add more convolution to a situation that should be simple – not social. I didn’t mean to pretend to my boss or your sister or anyone else that you and I were in a relationship, at least, I didn’t when she dragged me to that socially distanced and socially awkward mathlete event, it was just … in the moment it was a means to an end. My position in intergovernmental administration has been jeopardised by this whole affair and I just thought that if I could play into the prejudices of my superior, I might force him to admit -”

“So to summarise,” Richard interrupted before giving Phillippe an opportunity to finish, “you thought to politicise my sexual orientation for your own immediate ends and you don’t consider that exploitive because you didn’t think it would get back to me?”

That son of a bitch, Phillippe thought. “As I stated, I have very little speaking to my defence in any of this.”

“At least you can be honest with yourself about _that_ much,” Richard replied, adding with a frustrated sigh, “but who am I to judge you for the rest of it? I was only too keen to take you up on your suggestion with regard to Johanna and Adil without any notion of humility -”

“I don’t know. They seem happy, you shouldn’t feel bad -”

“Because _you_ are trying not to? Phillippe,” he nearly gaped, “I don’t mean for this to sound condemning, but does your conscious only manifest when you find it politically expedient or is everything you say and most of what you do so terribly insincere?”

Phillippe frowned. What did it matter if he acted in good faith – especially in _this_ instance?

“Don’t mistake me,” he tried to defend, “if I had met the guy or bothered myself to put his name into Google, I would have never attempted to manipulate you in that way. Adil Ayyub is smug in that casually condescending way where it is difficult to point to an exemplary incident for the sake of argument and the result … the worst of it is, I might say," he adjusted, "is I can see why men would be willing to follow him into another endless round of … what I am not exactly sure can be directly classified as ‘civil war’ giving the plight of the Kurdish people, but you know what I mean. Anyway, Johanna seems to go out for that sort of thing and to that end who wouldn’t be in love with your sister? She’s gorgeous and disillusioned and yet has too much genuine heart about her to come across as simply crass. They seem happy,” he surmised. “Or like they could be. Plus,” Phillippe shifted, “for all of his faults, I am kind of tempted to think that Adil Ayyub would do a better job at Newcastle than Mike Ashley, which um … I guess isn’t that high of a bar, but again, you know what I mean.”

Richard seemed to ponder this in brevity before dismissing him. “You have any brilliant ideas on how to convince John to get his life together then? So long as you are at it.”

“I fear I don’t understand,” Phillippe confessed. He had not spoken to John in the time since he had betrayed him to Ingeborg by beginning a rumour about him and present company. Unsure of the extent to which Richard knew his brother to be the origin of such rumours and not wanting to give the two yet more cause for conflict, he bit his tongue, electing that it should be Richard to expand upon whatever it was that he was asking before convolution things further with whichever half-truth might suffice civilised conversation between adult men who had never shared anything save for profound discomfiture in one another’s presence.

“Johanna is good at _not_ selling Newcastle United. She can close a deal, too, sure, but she’s made her name as a fixer by the positive public relations she has been able to generate by dragging negotiations out until reasonable grounds for moral objection presents, usually on part of the interested party,” Richard explained. “Adil is perfect for her, he is everything you claim, plus he’s nearly as old as my dad," he snorted, "read into that what you will - and to that end he’s already secured his legacy, so I should doubt he or his family would put her under any pressure to produce another heir.”

“It is such a shame,” Phillippe stated. “She would be such a wonderful mother.”

Richard narrowed his gaze slightly. “She can’t carry a child to term. At least, she and William had a series of miscarriages and I don’t think it is right to fault her for reluctance to go through that experience again,” he criticised as though he had any reason to anticipate that Phillippe did not already know as much and/or did not subscribe to the same sentiments.

Phillippe glared back at him, but Richard refused to acknowledge the shift, continuing with a tone of defeatism, “But the rest of it? She should close this deal, take a chance with a guy who really inspires her interests - especially when there is so little that speaks against it and so much to be gained – for her too, naturally, of course. But she is stuck. Mentally, emotionally, she is just stuck. She found something she excels at and is afraid to move on from it because she worries that she won’t be as successful in her next venture and it is so frustrating to observe, especially in the knowledge that she has so much potential.

“It is the same way with my brother; but that is just what happens when you overindulge children, I suppose, they are inclined to stay that way,” Richard struggled to censor his complaints. “How long has John been in university, now? I think it understandable to employ the justification that ‘one must first find himself’ and swap majors once, but John is the smartest bloke I know, and it would stand to reason that _he_ knows exactly who he is and is so comfortable in this knowledge that he willingly deprives himself of any opportunity for further discovery. I’m at my wit’s end.”

Oh. Phillippe thought. Was Richard just looking for perspective? The way Johanna and John told it, it had always seemed that he could not be asked to have a care.

“They just want attention like everyone else, and like everyone else that need is probably enhanced by the sense of isolation the year has brought,” Phillippe offered. “In 2019 the world would have been consumed by the fact that a top flight football club was about to be bought by a terrorist - to speak in the language of your famous yellow press,” he said in an excuse of his own terminology, “and now Johanna is literally marrying the guy and it barely qualifies a scandal even within my department, which must come as something of a relief to you personally,” he tried to encourage, “Adil will have to buy two strikers as soon as the papers are signed and invest at least as much in local philanthropy to stop people from questioning where the hell all of his money came from and I’m sure you’ve already negotiated those contracts with him -”

“We were hammering out details least night, yeah,” Richard nodded. Christ! Phillippe wanted to scream. That is what they were doing last night while he was watching the kids? Activly engaging in bad business? So much for affording anyone the benefit of doubt!

“Last night,” Phillippe shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ, here I thought between you there might be enough of a drop of decency to figure out how the needs of your nieces and nephew will be provided for in the event that -”

“If Constance thinks that John is best suited to take charge of her children should the worst pass, I might otherwise be tempted to agree with her,” Richard argued. “She and I have never seen eye to eye on anything - which seems a struggle most who know her have - but she has done an excellent job with those kids under impossible circumstances and that is at least one area where I find I cannot be critical of her judgement.

“Geoffrey died a month before Arthur was born, she finished med school and did her residency as a single mother of three and if she sees something in John that makes her think he would be up to the same challenge – I don’t think she is _wrong_ exactly, I think that he could come to terms with his own circumstances if he had the capacity to except the limitations of reality. You know he is in jail, right?”

“I had no idea,” Phillippe blinked. So much for affording the benefit of doubt to anyone!

“It is why I am taking the kids in the interim," Richard explained. "Until Monday, and to be honest, I am lost for what I am going to do to entertain them for the next twenty hours for I’m well certain that I am not going to pay my brother’s bail on top of the fines he now owns the hospital and health department.”

“Dear God, what has he done?”

“He brought Constance a few books, a gaming council, toothbrush, assorted toiletries, sweets and the like and when he was told that he could not visit her or the hospital in general he answered that she was a doctor with admitting rights to the same establishment, that as such he was sure she had a private room, and this escalated until officers came. And now he is in jail and Johanna has to wait on a test result in solitude before she can travel – which she arranged to do before John called last night to remind us of why we should _never_ put our faith in him - and my mother is busy filming and of course we don’t want to put you out -”

“You wouldn’t be,” Phillippe assured him, placing his hand on Richard’s shoulder in a show of support. “Louis is happy for the company and I enjoy having the kids around much as I miss their mum these days. Figure out your stuff.”

“It makes me so sad every day that Geoffrey never really got a chance to know them,” Richard mourned, leaning into an embrace Phillippe had not intended his gesture of solidarity to become. “He was so lucky to have a friend like you. They all are. But I won’t deal with John until tomorrow – until after Forest are kicked out of some domestic cup or another in order to reduce the whole of John's subsequent tantrum to fifteen minutes of ridiculing the manager without any specific complaints so that he might more accurately know the result of his careless actions. With the loss of something he truly loves -complaining about matters of no consequence, to give a precise language to it - he might take the lesson and apply it to more significant parts of his life than bloody spectator sport, but I digress.”

“Not a fan, are you?” Phillippe could not help but laugh, letting his fingers unconsciously comb though Richard’s long hair as the latter relaxed into him more and more.

“John isn’t either, to be fair,” Richard continued to rant. “He might have been when he was a kid - I don’t know, I never really went out for that sort of thing – but now I think he watches with the sole purpose of pointing out all of the ways he thinks Robin Locksley is misappropriating funds … which, maybe? But if that is the case why does John give him more to waste by subscribing to their steam, but who am I to talk? I don’t _almost_ have a degree in economics, and I don’t really get football as an afternoon pastime, for that matter. I just hate watching a game I can’t take part in. I get restless, I can’t explain it.”

“I can’t really shed much light there for you,” Phillippe confessed. “I _say_ I like football but more as an excuse to get to talk about work over drinks without seeming rude for it once Johanna gets started on the same … but really, now that I think on it, I don’t care for or about PSG. I just like money. And winning.”

“That is fairly evident regardless of the topic of conversation,” Richard laughed hardily.

“I suppose,” Phillippe gave, suddenly too conscious of his posture and determine to adjust it accordingly by pulling himself away from the comfort he was finding.

“Don’t take offence where it was not meant,” Richard pouted. “I like you, Phillippe, quite a bit more than I expected I would,” he paused. “You know I spent half of my lifetime exceedingly jealous of you?”

“For my now-evident ability to frame my more hideous desires in the common tongue?” Phillippe dismissed, hoping not to return to anything resembling a heart-to-heart which a man who almost seemed set on stealing his.

“For the fact that you have the kind of relationship with my siblings that I have always longed for – have always been denied by the same sort of blatant favouritism from which you yourself have benefitted, only not at the expense of Geoffrey and Johanna and John and I just … I want so _badly_ what you have with them to the extent that you seem to take it all for granted, only … only you don’t, not at your core, you really do give a shit without expenditure and maybe I am jealous still but mostly … I am awed,” he admitted, adding “I wish circumstances had presented themselves in a way that would have allowed us to get to know one another a bit better.”

Phillippe pondered this for a moment, surprised at the sentiment. He could have never imagined that someone as illustrious as Richard had always been could know anything of what it way to be isolated. He had additionally never known the extent of the resentment which Richard confessed, but he saw instantly that they had no cause for conflict, at least, if Richard sought his advice in earnest, which for Phillippe remained slightly suspect on its face.

“Listen, we could be positioned to take care of all our problems in a single battle,” Phillippe swallowed, shifting, “not even a battle, more of a field exercise if anything. You want a closer relationship with your brother? Bail him out of jail. He doesn’t need his dad right now to make sure he has learnt his lesson; he needs his older brother to tell him that it is okay to be scared sometimes because that is really all this is,” he told him before mentally breaking with the overtures of altruism. “And moreover,” Phillippe continued in suggestive tones, “we could really use John’s help in a very limited time window we have open to us. Di Segni told me to make sure I cleaned out my desk by Monday, for I take it he cannot have my security clarence changed before that date. He won’t be in the building today at least – he will probably be at church with his poor ward who I am all but certain he will shove into heresy sooner than later, but I digress.”

“You met Kamil, Adil’s son?” Richard snorted jovially, “I think he has already beaten di Segni to it. For little Frederick’s birthday he got him a Bible, well … he had the text of ‘The DaVinci Code’ and its many sequels printed in a book with a Bible-cover and in the same style of script, and knowing this, for my money I think Frederick willingly goes to prayer with giddy anticipation that this might just be the day that he gets caught making a mockery of it all.”

Phillippe again fell into laughter. “I take back everything I ever said or thought about either of them,” he claimed without consideration.

“Right?” Richard smiled before shifting, “But on the topic of bright kids being brilliantly deviant, I’m not bailing John out for an act of espionage or anything else. He’s good enough at finding trouble on his own, he doesn’t need you and I enticing him towards it.”

“Fine, then _I_ will if you have some moral obligation to being your brother’s keeper. I need him - _we_ need him - for _exactly_ this failure of his character,” Phillippe argued. “I need him to help me get into a few files that could dismiss this entire case against your claim, make sue a train isn’t _literally_ derailed whilst we are all in litigation. And John?" he tried anew, "He would _love_ you for it. If you would show him that you have some faith in him, he would rise to the bigger challenges, you feel?”

“What about the children?” Richard objected.

“We will get a sitter for a few hours.”

“During a lockdown?”

“Richard,” Phillippe could not help but to smile, “with all due respect – you are a corrupt businessman essentially profiteering off of an ongoing war on another continent because one of the belligerents has to build a few kindergartens in lower income neighbourhoods as a side cost of sport washing,” he surmised, “and I am -was- a minister delegate to the European Commission for Construction, Building and Infrastructure who actually pretty regularly does things that incites civil unrest abroad for the purposes of petty allocation and between us, I mean, we have to know someone with a fifteen, sixteen year old with the social upbringing to be discreet in exchange for a bit of crypto-currency.”

Richard gave him a hard look.

“What?” Phillippe returned, doing his best to match the gaze.

“Nothing,” Richard surrendered, “I just never would expect from the looks of you that you could prove quite so deviant the instant you receive any form of invitation.”

“I’m more handsome in contacts,” Phillippe clumsily (and indeed falsely) claimed, “and um – I’m not proud to admit it but this is kind of my base setting. Give me a few minutes to shower, call around, and we’ll go make your detractors pray God for his mercy.”

“Who could say no to such an offer?” Richard consented. Perfect, Phillippe thought.


	10. Adversity and Unchecked Privilege

John Plantagenet could not possibly have been comfortable perched as he on a fold down seat in the back of his brother’s white pick-up amongst an assortment of construction waste – emptied paper coffee cups, a few binders, a hard hat and two separate briefcases – against all of which the unfortunate man’s spidery legs could hardly contend. Richard, who had barely spoken a word to his brother since his greeting at the station had been met with a petty slight, seemed to seek some kind of solace from John’s trying presence by turning the vehicle a bit too sharply and hitting its breaks with full force whenever the roads allowed as to cause his youngest sibling as pain as he might without actually affording the boy bodily injury.

Phillippe Capet, all the while, had been trying his upmost to pretend as though he himself was not in the passenger seat to witness the two squabble like perfect children over the perceived offence of presence.

This, despite his dedication to purpose, was proving impossible.

Richard occasionally and with obvious intent made small gestures towards him of the sort that might well have set Phillippe’s fragile heart aflutter were it for the fact that the better part of his flirtations was mere performance theatre designed at provoking his brother’s ire. Earlier that same morning Phillippe had let himself feel a rush when Richard collapsed into his (however unintended) embrace; he had blushed when Richard had complimented his appearance upon washing up and donning the slightly-too-hip for his usual tastes outfit (which he had actually been meaning to send back to the online wardrobe service that had selected it on algorithm); Phillippe had let himself fall into the intrigue of seemingly out of place questions and answers and had even managed to laugh rather than outright lie when his tastes were addressed, causing Richard to at least play at the same sense of comfort.

He had left his flat wishing he had gotten to know Richard long before this whole awkward business of contract and cabal.

He left the city jail however wishing he had never exchanged anything more than perhaps a polite nod in passing.

John, as he professed immediately upon seeing Phillippe in the lobby, had not been able to sleep a wink, wrecked with worry as he was about Constance. How sick must she be for him to not be allowed within sight of her? Surely, John argued, she was entitled to the best treatment – she had, after all, continued to work remotely even after taking ill as had been the Health Minister’s orders, at least until her collapse – was she receiving anything short of the same care he knew she would provide her own patients? Was the hospital worried he would sue? Did Phillippe think he had grounds to? And what of the children? Was Johanna still planning on traveling to the UK to sit in on Adil’s December meeting with the FA with everything else transpiring? Had she gotten Eleanor to eat her veg this past week and was Atty still terrified he would actually act on things said in anger? Before Phillippe could address any matter in this monologue of concern, Richard had appeared at his side, placed his hand almost possessively on his shoulder and John had, in effect, responded by sulking – verbally, as was his wont.

In the truck Richard made a show at laughing a bit too hard at the jokes Phillippe attempted to lighten the mood. He placed his hand on Phillippe’s knee at a red light and spoke highly of the breakfast he had in fact all but ignored, knowing his brother not to have eaten for at least the past twelve hours. He told in both word and action something simply untrue on its face, namely that Phillippe was his friend rather than John’s - provoking his brother when, to Phillippe’s mind, the better course of action would be to instead placate him.

What did Richard expect to gain from this? Phillippe wondered, questioning further if it was within his interest to address the matter or to simply let it play out between the parties involved. John, he mused, was no different when Constance incited him into cruel banter, if anything they got on as well as they did as a result. Perhaps his relationship with Richard took the same form – except, Phillippe found himself frowning, this all felt a tad more personal. This felt as though it were all specifically directed at his person and that he (through virtue of some unrepented sin) was at fault for the way the two brothers refused to make peace with one another’s presence.

“No, I get what you are trying to do – gather evidence that an EU official was using his office to further a proxy war to the ends of inventing the temporary appearance of a stabilising economy after a pandemic in order to hold the single union together for another six months – as if, Christ I’m sorry – as if this wasn’t _literally_ the textbook definition of the Commissioner’s role,” John snorted, “I’m just lost as to what _he_ is doing here,” he stressed with gesture to his brother.

“He has a truck,” Phillippe answered, trying to come off as casual.

“I have a moral obligation to intercede,” Richard offered with considerably less composure. He made another hard turn and Phillippe began to regret his breakfast, fretting he would soon again taste it if his chauffeur continued to be indecisive with regard to which exit he ought take on this particular roundabout. He wondered if local police would have long since brought them all to bear were it not for the provincial plates that may have signified to an onlooker that they were quite possibly lost and began searching the windscreen for the vignette required to operate a vehicle in the city proper. To his mild annoyance he found that Richard had sought to that detail, but it settled him somewhat to have found a point on which to focus his dizzied gaze.

“I know you have economic incentive to do so which I can’t claim to condone giving the predicament you forced upon our sweet sister -” John returned. Phillippe wished they would both just stop, or at least have the courtesy to switch to English and spare him the southern French dialect. He was quickly coming to hate their accents nearly as much as he hated the argument itself and all of the variations he had heard in course for weeks on end.

“Oh,” Richard laughed, again finding an excuse to give Phillippe’s hand a small caress with his own, “but how I can empathise with Johanna’s ‘plight’.” He hit the breaks to turn. John gave out a small grown and a smile graced the corner of Richard’s lips. Phillippe removed his elbow from the central arm rest and crossed his arms over his chest. “Come now, Love. Don’t be like that,” Richard pretended to pout as he moved to pat his shoulder. “My brother’s own backhanded dealings ought be applauded.”

He knew, Phillippe realised as the warm touch sent shivers down his spine. Phillippe had spent half the morning avoiding the topic of how the rumours that existed about them had come to occupy conversation and perhaps perception fearful of this very outcome, but it seemed as though Richard had known all along these things to have originated in John’s mouth and mind. Phillippe wanted to say something - anything – to lessen the animosity (at least until such point that it no longer stood between himself and his objectives) but where he fell into an almost muter stutter, John had enough poise about him to laugh into a speech -

“I don’t think you do empathise with our sister, and how can you, I ask – it is clear that you want to make good on the rumoured dalliance you are alleged to have been enjoying with this loser, and why not? No one will begrudge you for it – the press might even be given in to buying some line about the two of you ‘being brave in the face of adversity’ when it is fucking twenty-twenty and no one gives a shit that you like getting it up the ass,” he spat. “It isn’t sacrilegious or scandalous or even worthy of satire and like you get – like you intellectually comprehend - that coming at this crusade of yours as though it were one of adversity rather than fucking uncheck privilege is offensive on its face, right?

“Anyway. Believe me, Johanna is never going to marry Adil – and she may even find a means of removing sex from the story - but she has to finalise this deal now because she will never get the chance to negotiate another for the Magpies, so you’ve basically taken and slaughtered her golden goose for a couple of negligible contracts you mean to use as a tax-write off. I guess the silver lining to it is you’re too proud not to try to have a go at my mate now that he’s gone to the effort of spraying on some drug-store knock-off cologne and rolled up his sleeves in an attempt to make him look less like a Sunday-School teacher – that what the beard is about too, buddy?” he shifted, tapping against the back of Phillippe’s seat. “Never mind. I frankly don’t give a damn about your Pep Guardiola looking ass regardless of the motivation behind your makeover. Ahh! Just like drop me off at the next light,” John dismissed them both before either could respond. “I’ll walk to the metro and find my own way home and you two can figure out all the ways you’ll inevitably come to make one another miserable whilst raising everyone’s suspicions with your schemes so wanting for premise,” he paused and revaluated in time to negate himself in nearly the same breath, “Like, sorry – no, I actually have to know, Richard, what _are_ you doing here? It is clear why Phillippe wants _my_ assistance but how are you going to argue your presence if you get caught?”

“I have a truck,” Richard responded dryly. “Phillippe has to clear out his office. My being there makes your presence less suspect if anything.”

“First, I never offered my help -”

“One might argue you are obliged,” Phillippe sighed. This was all so petty! Perhaps he had been vain to think that it would be a matter of ease to smooth things over between John and himself; perhaps he had been foolish to take Richard at his word of wanting a constructive relationship with his only living brother – but between their bickering he felt prepared to go it alone or simply give up!

“To you?” John gaped. “Oh, that is rich! Still don’t see why you need a truck to move a couple of cardboard boxes full of stuff that you didn’t already bring back to yours during the first lockdown, but whatever. Go on living your aspirations of toxic masculinity vicariously through my brother, but um,” he paused awkwardly but with seeming deliberation, “before he gets too into awkward admiration you’ve always born him, do us a favour and tell us who the composer of this piece is?”

Phillippe blinked, not entirely sure what he was being asked.

“John, I’m doing my best to understand you but find myself failing to so much as follow the logic of your accusations. It is Chopin,” Richard answered for him. “And what the fuck John? There is nothing ‘toxically masculine’ about the bloody piano, even if it being played from speakers in a mud-covered vehicle I otherwise use for work.”

“Yeah, no,” John drolled. “My point was, I highly doubt Phillippe could have placed it, but he will pretend otherwise because he’s had this thing since we were like twenty of wanting to be a ‘real adult’ even though he hates all that shit. He’ll never admit to being attracted to you either – even to himself. Your whole relationship will just be Phillippe following you around to operas and art galleries and the like, saying over and over how ‘nice it is to have a friend who shares his appreciation for culture’- an appreciation, mind, which he will demonstrate by his inability to discuss anything in any depth but never mind any of that for you’ll buy into it, brother, if only because you are so pathetically desperate to be liked that you won’t even notice that everything Phillippe tries to present is a falsehood.”

“You have absolutely no evidence for your accusations,” Phillippe said though he saw his point for his phantasies followed the same basic pattern. He glanced at Richard who kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, though Phillippe was sure he saw through him, too. To hell with all of it! Phillippe sulked into the back of his seat, looked at the watch a series of stalemate negotiations had bought him and wondered when the ride would stop, or when the government would issue new lockdown restrictions that would leave everyone else feeling as isolated as he presently found himself. Both were preferable to this predicament.

“I mean it is not a criticism,” John attempted, “not being artsy doesn’t mean that you’re not smart or interesting or whatever. It is just … your phantasy is so supressed that when you indulge it is always takes this wildly irresponsible form of creating civil discord to absolutely no effect -”

“I just bailed you out of jail for trying to bring Stan a Nintendo Switch,” Phillippe reminded him.

“Yeah, but that is me. That is why you and I work – but leave my oh-so-perfect brother out of it. He doesn’t deserve your bullshit.”

“If I make _him_ stay in the car,” Phillippe sighed, “will you help me steal whatever files we can get off the server?”

“No, but I can plant a bug in a standard update that will open a backdoor allowing you to get in on any device if you can’t be more specific than ‘whatever files.’ You two really don’t have a workable plan do you?”

“You can do things like that?” Richard raised an eyebrow.

“Aye, studied IT, ‘innit?” John smirked.

“And you can’t manage to defend your dissertation despite having _also_ read law?” Richard scoffed. “Alas brother, have fun helping your friend disassemble and carry his desk down several flights of stairs. Might serve you to do some actual work for once.”

“Wait - what?” John gaped.

* * *

“I can’t believe this is how my tax money is being spent,” John declared, taking another picture of the convertible standing desk as it was being deconstructed. Phillippe, certain that rebuilding the thing would be too much of a bother regardless of how detailed the reverse-instructions were, grew all the more annoyed at his former-friend’s lurking, convinced that he would have long since finished were it not for John’s ‘assistance.’

“I can’t believe for a moment that you pay taxes, but that is a separate issue,” he returned. “The desk is mine. The cost was subsidised by my insurance, but I still paid the half.” He still had the receipt and invoice as well, and the whole point of taking this particular piece of furniture with him in the act of clearing out his office was the hope of being asked for proof of ownership by what he could reasonably estimate would amount to six separate authorities and oversight committees. If he were to leave without due ceremony, he was determined to make sure to waste eight hours of everyone’s time by wielding the bureaucratic apparatus he otherwise devoutly believed in. But there was no sense in arguing any of this to John, who experience told had neither the requisite information of intergovernmental paperwork and procedure nor patience to obtain such even so far as to recognise the brilliance of this coup. Instead, Phillippe offered his photographer a cheeky smile before handing him another piece of tempered plywood, which John dutifully placed up against the wall with all of the others.

“And your insurance is subsidised by the state which itself is paid for the same people your department seems determined to make late for work each day, ergo the point is mine. How many parts does this thing have?” John shook his head in frustration. “Best argument in Brexit’s favour, I swear,” he snorted before returning the full of his attention to the screen of his mobile.

“John,” Phillippe heaved, “would you concentrate on making a copy of whichever files you can gain access to and cease this, this -”

“Oh, I’m done. Opened a door in a regular Windows updated and copied all of di Segni’s shit to my cloud. Pretty Ricky was right though. It would look fairly suspect if we made no effort in keeping up appearances,” John answered casually.

“That fast?” Phillippe wondered.

“Twelve minutes. Hardly a record,” John answered as though this were easily done. “Here,” he showed him his screen for verification. “I’m scanning the guy’s search history hoping to find something just fucked. Like I’m sure anything interesting that does come up will just own itself to his having a teenage ward under his roof – but fuck if this bloke isn’t sloppy. He must have checked a work account from his home computer, which I recognise doesn’t help you in your objectives whatsoever, but I’m particularly intrigued by his search history on a few recipe sites. Is he vegan or is it Lent or something?”

“He follows the pre-1983 Code of Canon Law regarding abstention,” Phillippe answered out of hand, “But I’m kind of surprised he cooks.”

“Corona, ‘innit?” John smirked. “Want me to check his Amazon Wishlist just for kicks?”

Phillippe smiled and shook his head. “You could work for any three lettered government acronym.”

“Hard pass. I’d much rather use social media to bitch about match results than fix results in foreign elections – which reminds me, I feel like I am owed some gesture of thanks.”

“I bailed you out of jail,” Phillippe reminded him, his sense of earnest again overtaking. He hoped John was not preparing to ask for money – he was already out €5,000 on his regard – plus the €38.71 form a few weeks back - and for the moment he was on severance pay. The sheer nerve of some people!

“I’m risking my freedom to help you further your incompetence,” John argued. “The least you could say would be, ‘Thank you, John. Why don’t we go back to mine, watch a bit of footy on my big screen and order in something covered in melted cheese.’”

Phillippe blinked. “I didn’t realise we were on such friendly terms.”

“Didn’t realise we had to be to shout at the telly,” John shrugged.

Phillippe took a deep breath. He hated that relations had become so strained between them that such sentiment, even if it was meant in irony, had found his so off guard. “Look, John – I understand why I’ve fallen in your esteem of late and I appreciate the fault that I carry in that regard, but I am at least trying to make good on it and the impression you seem to have … it simply _isn’t_ true,” he said in reference to the car ride, though he privately acknowledged that much of it was. “This business with your brother -”

“What of it?” John sneered, then softened. “No, stop – you’re only going to confirm my suspicions and I kind of want things to go back to the way they were for whatever small window where that might prove even a remote possibility – I don’t know, I figure we’ve got five, six hours where we might still be friends. What say you?”

“Is this your way of apologising?” Phillippe squinted.

“Apologizing? Me? _Me?_ ” John demanded.

“John,” Phillippe swallowed, “What do you think we are doing here? _I lost my job because of you_ -”

At this assertion John threw up his arms in frustration. “No, friend, you are faced with a transfer because the entirety of your business ethics condolences to blatant emotional manipulation of everyone with whom you are made to contend. And I mean … no offence meant, but you are incompetent even in that!” he ranted. “You created this fiction around my sister and a foreign warlord thinking that Richard’s professional reputation would suffer the association without really even having a further plan of any kind because you were briefly tempted by a cute barista and it just somehow didn’t occur to you as a result that okay, one – Johanna is fucking good at PR. That is the whole reason why she is able to fix deals between undesirables, why Adil Ayyub came to her asking her to arrange a high-profile sale that he might thusly convince western leaders of his credibility – that Washington or Westminster or what have you ought to back his brother’s faction in this incarnation of a proxy war that has been going on for centuries. Two – Richard did nothing wrong in writing his proposal; he won the contract because he is the best at what he does and the only reason the Commission wanted this called into question is because it did not want to see it completed on the same economic grounds that will surely someday negate its very existence. Three – this whole thing with Ingeborg, not my problem, it is yours – and if you had just said from the beginning ‘ _I don’t see this going anywhere_ ’ she wouldn’t be calling for your head, I mean, she is more of a mature adult than you are -”

“Are you actually mad?” Phillippe exclaimed, “You were the one who planted in her conscious the ludicrous notion that your brother and I -”

“I wasn’t finished. Four – all of this shit we are in owes itself primarily to the fact that you let yourself be manipulated - and so easily at that! - by a pair of preteens who thought it would actually be quite swell indeed if they both owned sporting franchises and recognised you as the easiest way to make this more of a possibility. How pathetic does that make you?”

Phillippe shook his head in disbelief. “Is that really what you think?”

“Kamil’s twelve,” John said flatly. “Bright kid by all accounts but dear God – hardly positioned to internalise politics. He’s spent most of his life in boarding school, he’s not fighting on the front lines or negotiating arms deals like some of his siblings, he’s just trying to prove to his European classmates that he is cool, or at least on par with the rest of them, and di Segni’s chubby little savant is most probably thrilled to bits that anyone -really anyone at all- would see him in a positive light.” He paused, “Think about it, we were like that once, you and I.”

“In what possible sense?”

“Like you were that smart kid who inspired expectations no one could reasonably grow up to fulfil and whatever I was, having older siblings practically rendered that irrelevant so it was kind of like whatever – we were mates because, really, how else is one going to get through school? Granted, you were never smart enough to turn your pathetic need to feel included into a net strength,” he slighted, “but all the same, I’m cross with you for falling for it when you of all people ought to _know_ better. You made a fucking career out of suggestion and incomplete information.”

It was too much! “You further this … whatever you are claiming this is into a situation none of us can get out of and I – my God for the life of me I can’t contemplate your reasons. Is it that you are jealous?” Phillippe wondered, softening his tone. “John, Richard wants nothing more than to have a normal relationship with you.”

“Jealous?” John repeated with a cruel chuckle, “Can it maybe be that I am equally as protective?” 

“I have no designs on your brother,” Phillippe dismissed.

“No, you have no designs on validating him by admitting that the – sorry, but _clear_ attraction – is mutual because it doesn’t conform what whatever idea you have of yourself. Like I don’t care, I really don’t, or at least I wouldn’t if I knew you to be a man of any character. But you … you’re going to do whatever seems immediately convenient without really knowing what you want and then afterwards, well that will be it for us all, won’t it? I can’t well keep hanging out with you after you’ve broken Richard’s heart. I mean we’re not close, he and I, but it just wouldn’t be right -”

“I’m not gay, John!” Phillippe exclaimed. “Why do you find it so easy to believe lies of your own telling?” And why – Phillippe wondered – did he himself struggle so much to do the very same?

John gave an uncommitted shrug. “I don’t know that sexuality factors in any way to my complaint that you are selfish and self-entitled. Richard certainly seems to think he holds some personal interest for you, otherwise - believe me - he wouldn’t consent to compromising his pride on your behalf, and you are just going to let him and I, fuck Phillippe – I actually do need you right now especially and I almost can’t believe that you would force me into begging but for the love of all that is holy can you just press pause on all of this for one second? Real life … it is a lot smaller than all of this, but it isn’t therefore less significant.”

With this it dawned on Phillippe that they were not really fighting about Richard at all, or about Johanna’s marriage prospects or the series of business negotiations tied up in artificial relationships. This was about Constance, whose condition Phillippe had until this point failed to fully internalise to the same extent it was clearly affecting his friend.

Phillippe bit his bottom lip, suddenly conscious of how alone John must have felt in the knowledge of how quickly expectations might dissipate. Constance herself had expected to raise her family with a loving husband at her side only to watch his tragic fall, but she was the sort of person who could stand up again regardless of circumstance. John had by contrast found his comfort in a spiral that left him static, and now he was being asked to conform to all that he had avoided – seemingly absent of support. Phillippe did not in fact know Richard well enough to judge if his confidence in his younger brother’s ability to replace the mother of three young children owed itself to ignorance of his person or denial of the immediate situation. He had watched the realisation set in for Johanna before she put on a brave face and busied herself with matters over which she had more control. And he himself had done no better when brought to task.

The world moved on and he himself had done nothing, obsessed as he was with his own meagre status and the sinful thoughts inflicted upon him through company convened in such schemes. He ought to have bailed John out the instant he learnt of the trouble he had gotten himself into, taken him back to his and resolved all of the questions burning in his mind over breakfast leftovers. He should have confided in him how helpless he felt looking at Louis in the weeks and months that followed his wife’s passing, told him what had helped and what had not – told him, in essence, that he was not alone with his worries, for it seemed as though no one else was quite there yet.

The room suddenly felt empty though they had yet to move anything to the truck.

“Hey, hey,” Phillippe tried but further words failed him. It was just as well that John turned away.

Maybe there was nothing more that could be said between a man all too conscious of his own mortality and a monster preoccupied with his own ideas of order.


	11. Love and Marriage

Fifty-six minutes into the melee, Phillippe Capet found himself every bit as disgusted and unravelled as John Plantagenet surely would have been had he been affording Nottingham Forest any small part of his mind. Phillippe could see the television from where he was seated at his long table in the adjacent dining room and after the club his sometimes-friend supported conceded one-nil, he found his eyes periodically shifting to the coverage in inverse correlation to his will to keep them fixated on the screen of his personal laptop. John’s brother Richard (whose own frustrations manifested in a pace along the opposite side of the table made for eight) made various small gestures all the while as though to signal that he was fully engrossed in what Phillippe explained, but his nodding and twisting at his hair and beard were poorly timed and at times it felt entirely misplaced. Phillippe often found himself stopping midsentence when he saw another failed pass from the corner of his eye. Richard, he realised to his embarrassment, probably interpreted this to be a symptom of his old stutter if he was in fact paying attention at all. It was awkward, so much so that in short order Phillippe genuinely began to choke on his words before he could convey them.

“This is disgusting,” Richard declared suddenly as Phillippe stammered with a glace towards to the living room to the latter’s imminent relief. Perhaps, he thought, they would be better served by postponing the dubious joint plotting operation until supper had arrived.

“I know, right?” Phillippe snorted, partially relieved that the gorgeous man before him who wore a three-piece suit on a Sunday, listened to Radio Classique, and wrote poetry on his lunch hour in a little black Moleskin he kept in his glovebox could likewise have his better attentions robbed by something as fully unsophisticated as a midtable Championship side. “I’ve no idea what is going on with Little John, but he’s completely lost his focus,” he began to rant. “I know there is thing about players always scoring at their old club after a transfer which -okay, statistically I guess – but it is the only thing I can halfway reasonably cite to explain Alan á Dale scoring that second, Oh! Here, watch the replay – it is not even a good run, he had a good fifteen seconds to react -”

“I wasn’t alluding to the game,” Richard said dryly. “Look,” he nodded towards his brother on the couch where the babysitter they had arranged for the entire afternoon was teaching them how to braid hair. “I have to end this – _delicately_ , but immediately. You’ll excuse me.”

“I don’t know,” Phillippe observed. “I mean it has been a while since I’ve had locks of my own, but I think little Alys is being a tad dramatic, he certainly looks like he is doing his upmost to handle her hair as gently as he can with that brush. Probably just a matter of -”

“It is not Alys that I’m worried about, it’s Isabella – are you watching this? Look!” Richard gestured, hissing. “She hasn’t taken her hand from John’s bicep for a decent five minutes now and he is smiling at her as though he has every intent of spiking that drink she’d have asked him to order in any other setting. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he doesn’t realise that she is fifteen but oh, Christ! He’s spent a decade in uni – how is he falling for this? Unbelievable.”

Isabella Taillefer, or so Phillippe considered fleetingly, was likely the sort of girl who laboured under the illusion that she knew how to obtain all which she desired if for no other reason than she had been denied extraordinarily little in life up until now. The only child of some solicitor in Richard’s employ, she had certainly fit the profile of a teen worldly enough to negotiate the terms of her discretion. Richard had initially offered her one-hundred Euros for an afternoon’s work of making sure a twelve, ten, and two six-year-olds were not left to the dangers of their own devising; Isabella countered that she wanted a fifty-Euro surcharge for risk and when Phillippe argued that this was too much to pay anyone to essentially do somewhere else that which they would engage in at home – humour banal conversations both on and whilst looking at screens of varying size - Isabella answered that they two were leaving for the afternoon during a strict lockdown and that in explaining even this much they had already agreed to whatever fees and fines she might ask. Fifty, she had said, was far less than five hundred, which she was positioned to all but ensure befell them if they decided to ring someone else to sit instead.

Richard had initially been impressed by all of this – having a mother who had made a name for herself in the world of business long before making that name a household one by virtue of sitting on a panel of one of those internationally syndicated business-themed reality shows in which contestants pitched ideas to prospective investors. Phillippe, who had only ever seen clips on social media or while scrolling through channels in search of something to take his mind off the plague, could never quite recall whether the illustrious Eleanor was a ‘Lion’ or a ‘Shark’ or a ‘Dragon’ or some other predatory animal, but he could reasonably assume by Richard’s initial reaction that young Isabella would do reasonably well in her boardroom.

Phillippe, who had initially seen the child with too-much makeup for the extortionist she revealed herself to be, might have stood in support of his co-conspirator’s sudden desire to eject her from this household, but for the moment, there was too much value in leaving her be for all of the reasons Richard argued for her dismissal. John was the sort of bloke who could be relied upon to recover something damning, but when it came to figuring out what to actually do with incriminating documents, Phillippe reasoned he would only grow bored and prove himself a distraction. It was a blessing in disguise that John presently saw him personally to be a threat to Richard’s happiness (and perhaps, Phillippe considered darkly, more relevantly, his purse strings.) The two brothers had managed basic civility in regard to one another when loading up the back of the truck and it simply would not do well to let them descend into another petty argument when he might otherwise yet need to utilise both of their particular skillsets.

When their party had returned to the flat, Isabella, her long, dark hair now pleated with ribbons – the result of playing with two little girls, no doubt – had fallen into a pout and practically begged to stay. She had, after all, been paid for the entirety of the afternoon and would it not be to the benefit of everyone if she continued to keep an eye on the children, allowing them to sort to whatever their business was? Phillippe said no. Richard, having no first-hand experience with the ease in which children were used to entertaining themselves, agreed as if to spite him. John, for his part, complained that he in contrast had not been paid for his efforts and planned to watch the second tier of English football and order in with someone else’s card in protest, but if she really wanted to stick around, he would be more than happy to make sure she was accommodated. Phillippe had rolled his eyes at all of it.

Much as he had been against the predicament, he saw it working towards everyone’s benefit. Isabella, a teenager who tried to present as a sophisticated twenty-something, who probably had an Instagram following comprised of Eleanor and Alys’ demographic of preteens who longed to present as fifteen-year-olds with make-up-tips and sponsored posts, seemed to be genuinely good with children and grown men who had never grown up. How she had manoeuvred around John’s mansplaining of sport enough to return him to a place of trust with the nieces and nephew he had so recently blown up at was anyone’s guess. Richard, it seemed, certainly had his suspicions, but the question of if these bore out any accuracy was for the moment, frankly irrelevant.

“You are reading far too much into it,” Phillippe shrugged, trying to make his case by changing the argument. “Look, all I see is that you might have had a point, what you said earlier – if Constance thinks John is the right person to raise her kids in the event of her passing, we are not in any position to question that. Sure – he is not exactly in a place in his life we’d all prefer for him, but I … when I heard she had taken ill and then in short order that she had been admitted to hospital, of course I was upset … but it was, it was just too much to deal with, I couldn’t accept the reality of it all and so I – like Johanna, and you yourself I have grounds to suspect – just went on dealing with matters of ultimately less significance as a kind of ersatz. John’s been going a bit mad figuring out what he is going to do for those kids, and we’ve all been – for ultimately petty and superficial reasons – ignoring his better efforts. It is no real wonder he acted out. Just give him the afternoon to calm down.”

Richard barely gave the counter any moment of reflection before resuming his tirade. “The more he relaxes into this trap the more reason I fear I’ll have to be concerned that we will be in another Me-Too sort of situation. She is _fifteen_ , Phillippe!” he stressed. “It is bad enough when I hear about him taking home girls from lecture, but he is nearly twice Isabella’s age and he should know better than to encourage this kind of admiration.”

“Honestly, I doubt that is where his mind is. There is a real chance that he will lose his best friend in this plague and find himself with a responsibility for which he is fully unprepared regardless of how natural he finds otherwise himself in the company of children. And pretending there is an attraction at play on Isabella’s part – I don’t want to fall into the trap of saying, as you seem to be, that this is by anyone’s design. Your brother is attractive and engaging and at the moment, at least, presumably emotionally unavailable and she is in puberty with all the daydreams that entails – plus who knows what her home life is like?” Phillippe suggested. “It might just be the lockdowns, granted, but even so she was here within ten minutes of your call and seemed frightened and disappointed when we came back before we had planned, just let her enjoy whatever small, one-sided excursion this is and if it helps, you can bring this all up to John after we’ve eaten – have another laugh at my expense by enlightening him to however you felt upon finding out that I spent half my life in the illusion that I’d actually inspired your attraction at circa the same age.”

This caught Richard almost as off-guard as Phillippe imagined a more direct confrontation of ‘oh sure, blame the child’ would have had he the kind of character that lent itself to sly remarks. He fought the urge to smile though in truth he was rather pleased that he had not only persuaded his guest but unsettled him in the process. Richard, he decided, was for all of the manners and charm he otherwise processed simply too comfortable trying to assert authority where he had no dominion. This was, after all, Phillippe’s home, it was his crusade and giving what Richard had thus far contributed it was entirely his plan as well and if John was inclined to making an ass of himself in the general vicinity in a way that suited for the moment, Richard had no right even suggesting he take an active role in stopping it.

“Phillippe,” he seemed to pivot. “I’m – looking back I’m truly ashamed of my behaviour towards you this morning.”

“I thought you were being nice,” Phillippe lied. Good, gravel, he thought.

“No, you didn’t,” Richard said softly. “I saw even then that I was making you uncomfortable, but I – I had no right to feel justified in doing so. I’m flattered, really, in a way, knowing that you have or maybe had such feelings towards me -complicated as they may be - and I ought never to have exploited that in any fashion or towards any end, especially not one quite so petty as punctuation just how frustrated I am with my younger brother.

“Perhaps you are right, perhaps this is all a simple manifestation of fears too complex to be easily managed. I don’t know. I can’t deal with Constance. I still can’t deal with Geoffrey,” he confessed. “It has been six years and I still feel as though I’ll never be able to enjoy things for their own sake – I’ll hear a song on the radio or someone at work will tell a joke at work and it is often my first reaction that Geoffrey would apricate this, to the extent that I’m taken out of the moment entirely, wishing I could share it. Now with his wife and his kids and the whole family wanting practically nothing to do with me, everything just feels such a betrayal, which of course isn’t an excuse for my actions and barely qualifies explanation -”

“I think that is probably the best way you can remember your brother - smiling and laughing and making everything seem genuinely uncomplicated by virtue of his presence,” Phillippe told him. “Naturally, it is the cruellest irony that everything presently related to his memory undoubtably is – complicated, I mean. But – you could sort that to some small extent. You could leave me to all of this and go sit with Stan and Geoffrey’s kids on the sofa, bant with your brother and let everyone know that you are at least trying to be present, even if it is hard. I know they would apricate that. Maybe not Isabella – but um. Yeah. Geoffrey certainly would.”

“How on earth are you single?” Richard smiled. Dear God! Was the man’s reaction to every minor discomfort to simply resort to light flirtations? Even after apologising in kind!? Phillippe thought back to John’s assessment and the phantasies it so closely touched. Part of him longed to escape to realities that would never be – following Richard around to art exhibits, pretending he enjoyed the orchestra or understood poetry that did not rhyme.

Attractive as he found his friends’ brother, he was not sure if he actually wanted to know his love or if he was simply enamoured with the regard Richard’s company might lend to his own self-image. Curious as he might have otherwise been to find out, he was growing rather bored of dancing around Richard’s indirect compliments and would rather he simply keep his opinions to himself and left him to conquer their mutual foes. 

“Well,” Phillippe rolled his eyes. “I’m a civil-servant, the widowed father of a kindergartener, I’m bald, slightly out of shape, and edging into middle-age though my hobbies and interests aren’t much altered from what they were when I was a teenager. I cross myself as a kind of reflex to any and everything that causes my pulse to quicken and where I consider myself religious, I never actually attend mass because I can’t bring myself to go to confession and tell God’s ageing emissary on Earth about how I occasionally act upon sexual fantasies the Bible forbids with the some of the more suspect looking contents of my Hello Fresh shipment.”

With this, Richard started to laugh though it had not been Phillippe’s design. “Yeah, don’t we all?”

“This isn’t even to mention that the last time I actually _had_ sex it was with my best friend about ten years ago almost immediately after she facilitated the sale of a football club she’d inherited in her husband’s will back to his two-year old second cousin who has since grown up to be a total sociopath, which is neither here nor there but it makes it kind of difficult to engage in our circles even though – or maybe because – it meant nothing to Johanna and no one else knows.”

“Really?” Richard blinked. That should shut him up, Phillippe thought. In a tactic he had never failed to employ offensive as it was to the principles to which he strove, whenever another friend made an effort to casually introduce him to some woman since fate had made him a widower, he invited Johanna into the conversation be it physically or figuratively, assuming that women as a rule were keen on comparisons and usually found themselves wanting regardless, but especially against a gorgeous, witty, bleach-blonde with the kind of tan one could only obtain in the global south, who spoke six languages and whose easy laughter sounded like the chime of gold coins. Whilst he doubted Richard could harbour and envies against a woman he had seen grow up from a girlhood of scraped knees, he also doubted he would have much interest in that which she had chosen to discard, either. It was for the best. He would much rather be able to maintain what was left of his friendships with her and John than actualise shameful phantasies that sent him to prayer.

“My last date ended with me literally fleeing into the night as quickly as my feet could carry me and ended up finding me jobless and in unpassable strife with everyone whom I hold dear which will ultimately have to be settled in a court room,” Phillippe continued in complete earnest. “Otherwise, I still play Dungeons and Dragons, I was singing MIKA under the sower this morning, I voted for the Rassemblement National in the last general election – and not out of protest - and the only moderately redemptive thing about me is that I bought so much toilet tissue before the first lockdown that I had no hand in contributing to more recent supply shortages. In other words, you needn’t berate yourself over your relentless faux flirtations during the ride to my old seat of employment this morning. It was more action than I would have otherwise gotten by any roll of the dice and I can’t well take it personally or hold it against you. You should try to make up with your brother though.” ‘By any roll of the dice?’ Phillippe cursed himself. He truly was as pathetically nerdy as he had taken labours to explain. Richard looked at his with some sympathy. Phillippe buried his eyes in his palms, wanting to disappear.

“That isn’t all what I meant. Forgive me I – I really meant that I think you are wonderful. You always find a way of saying exactly the right thing - when it suits you. I wish you saw that,” Richard said.

“I wish it served me more,” Phillippe complained.

“Might I still be permitted to offer what assistance I can?” his guest hesitated.

“No,” Phillippe answered quickly. Richard seemed taken aback. “I – looking at this, I don’t think you need to do anything but show up in court and give an honest account of your transactions.”

Richard frowned to himself and again began to pace. “There really are no good options then, are there?”

“No, but that might not be a _bad_ thing. Look, the fact of the matter is, John’s right, they don’t have anything on either of us that is career ruining, even if every judge on that court was convinced that the rumours surrounding our liaison were true, it isn’t as though I personally approved your proposal or was involved with it in any way before its being challenged. Di Segni can be single minded,” he consented, “but he isn’t stupid – the only reason he holds a position in Brussels is because he was ushed out of Italian politics to prevent him from facing similar corruption charges around that ghastly episode in Zara which his ill-planning enticed. His dismissal would force his return to Rome prior to the expiration of the statute of limitations – but again, he is not going to let it get that far and I’ve a mind to think he is already plotting his way out. We’ll just … help him along a bit. Help him to meet us halfway a bit faster as to not limit your supply options due to delay.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Richard asked, stopping in his tracks.

“By giving the appearance of an easy consolation prize for his bad faith. Admittedly, I fucked up with Johanna and Adil – we all kind of dropped the ball there - but I watched the lot of them interact yesterday, and if this sale goes through, it will surely trigger the intended wave of public support and not just with the liberals who already view the wider Kurdish conflict as a cause celeb. The Americans will consent themselves to another air raid – it costs them next to nothing in terms of either funds or long-term commitment - and if the Ayyubid can work this into reasserting control over Iraqi Kurdistan -”

“I don’t want to be pedantic when it comes to political geography, but the Ayyubid are in Syria and Egypt where western enterprise has never had a foothold.”

“Do you honestly think anyone making legislation in the US or the EU differentiates one militia group from another, understands borders in the part of the world outside of the investments the put into Turkey’s enforcement of their own, or operates outside of the assumption that Islam is homogenous, synonymous with ‘culture’ and that everyone in the entire region is an ‘Arab’ in the way that you or I might describe ourselves as ‘European’?” Phillippe countered.

“Fair point,” Richard conceded uncomfortably. “So, we’ll get di Segni to argue to himself that business can return to the region and the EU can theoretically turn enough of a profit as a result as to turn a blind eye to some of Saladin’s rhetoric. I follow. Maybe.”

“Trade wants stability, or at least a vaguely convincing illusion of it,” Phillippe stated plainly. “But that, about getting di Segni to acquest to whatever the Ayyubid might desire in return for their cooperation outside of coordinated air raids, might require you to back off a bit domestically. Um. I may be getting ahead of myself -”

“No, I would rather you continue. In what sense?” Richard asked. Phillippe was glad that he had read up on regional politics the night before. He had only made his way through two Wikipedia articles and about seven-hundred words of an article Adil’s daughter (and diplomatic surrogate) Dayfa had recently posted a link to in her Twitter feed. Unable to force any emotional connection to the conflict much as it might otherwise prove convenient, he was glad that he was at least good at absorbing enough of the larger plot points to memory. Phillippe was content that he had just sounded smart before someone much more versed in the subject than he himself ever personally cared to be, which was a good omen in terms of future adversaries. It was in his experience far easier to convincingly lie to an enemy than it was to deceive a willing ally –

And Phillippe saw that he could work this partnership for all it was worth at no great effort.

“Throw one or two of the projects you’ve planned in Newcastle to Canute in exchange for him dropping his present case?” he suggested casually as he could come across.

Richard grimaced. “It is an assumption – granted – but I don’t think the Dane can presently finance such an expenditure.”

“The new training facility, you mean?” Phillippe pressed, trying to make Richard in time agree that he had come up with the plan on his own.

“He wouldn’t be interested in building a public library or low-income housing. Come, we both know that,” Richard answered as Phillippe had expected he might. “It lacks the prestige. Look, I’m just going on a list from memory here of where I’ve seen his firm stake its claim in recent years -”

Phillippe could attest as much with access to di Segni’s files. “I’m with you,” he said, “but that is just the thing. You can’t build anything without conducting an archaeological survey which is something I’ve noted that Canute never budgets for which leads me to believe he doesn’t have anyone in such on his regular staff. I know a girl – underemployed, straight out of university – who might well be willing to take on the assignment, we just have to make it worth her while, if you see what I am getting at.”

It took Richard a while to answer. He stopped and seemed to study Phillippe for a hint as to ulterior motives. Phillippe wondered himself if he should play up his affections for Agnes, if John or Johanna had mentioned something about her in passing that had found its way back to Richard’s ears, if Richard were already making the calculation that providing a rival with a better opportunity would negate any opposition which he might otherwise face from her in obtaining whatever interpersonal objective he thought himself to be after. Phillippe had personally tired of the sweet nothings that seemed to signal yet less, but he did not have the energy to let down a girl her otherwise liked quite well and genuinely wanted to do well by her, especially giving consideration to the consequences of the last date that had left him disinterested.

“I’ll find out from my contacts if there is anywhere in the area the local university has tried to stake a claim to before such projects stopped being funded. If anything is found, they will have to put a stop on construction, and surveys can take upward of six years as we both know. Canute, of course, will be paid all the while which will help him balance the books and it is not as though any of this will ultimately cost Adil anything he won’t be able to recoup. And your friend, if she is at all clever, will be able to turn this an academic posting. Yeah,” Richard seemed to say to himself, “this could work. Talk to your people, I’ll talk to mine. Might do us both better if I were to keep your name out of it though, no offence.”

“Um, none taken. I um – I’ll of course figure out what to say to Ingeborg, but blessedly I’m not legally permitted to speak to her as long as all of this in in litigation. ‘Blessedly’ was perhaps the wrong word. I don’t really know why she’s so hung up on me or what idea she has of me that would possibly inspire such a want of possession,” Phillippe again buried his brow in his palm. “It really and truly isn’t my intention to be this awful.”

“Speaking from some limited experience, I think it is because you are ultimately a sweet and decent bloke,” Richard said softly as he moved to approach. Could he not take a blasted hint? “I genuinely enjoy your company although it must be said we’ve done little but plot our ways out of potential catastrophes of our own making,” Richard continued, “and … at the risk of falling into my own regrettable behavioural patterns, I have to say -”

“What?!” Phillippe snapped when his guest drew close enough that he felt himself drowning in the musk of the man’s cologne. “Are you incapable of maintaining any degree of professionalism?”

“I – it is more of a matter of my having regrettably few private interactions,” Richard stammered as he took a step back. “I thought we were -”

“We are ‘plotting our ways out of catastrophes of our own making’, as you put it. Can’t we do that without courting new ones?” Phillippe begged. This was too much! What did he possibly want from him?

“Being that your solution to wasting my time is to orchestrate a scenario in which a European Commissioner negotiates limited military intervention in a foreign conflict, I’d be interested to know where exactly exploring the possibility of friendship falls on this odd scale of measurement by which you seem to calculate,” Richard frowned.

“Why would you want to be friends with me?” Phillippe asked. “Honestly – are you just trying to punish your brother for … I don’t know, his general personality? Because he doesn’t deserve that. And even if he _does_ , I’m not exactly comfortable being the weapon with which you deliver that blow to his already limited esteem.”

“Oh my God, this is not about John,” Richard scoffed. “I _like_ you.”

“You don’t know me,” Phillippe spat.

“I’d like to.”

Phillippe tried to think of a diplomatic response, tried to think of an argument – legitimate or otherwise – that would keep Richard in check until their joint objectives were reached but, in this regard, he found himself empty. The doorbell rang before he could string together words around ‘circumstance’ or perhaps ‘devout Catholicism’, and he heard his son Louis shout “Pizza!” from the living room before he and Arthur trampled in asking for the card and a cash tip with all the fevered excitement of young boys who had spent months without like company. Phillippe pulled out his wallet, shut his laptop can called for the girls to help him set the table.

“Wait, I was just getting the hang of this,” John complained as Alys rushed to answer the call, her tight curls still only half braided.

“Did you not give them anything to eat for lunch?” Phillippe inquired of Isabella, who met his question with a stammer that the family had only just finished breakfast when she arrived.

“Were you guys able to get anything from those files you wanted?” John moved to interrupt before Phillippe could even lightly chastise the girl for not following instructions that he had not in fact given but felt rather inferred by the nature of assignment. John placed a protective hand on her shoulder. With any luck, Richard would notice and insist on driving her home immediately after she had eaten her fill, leaving Phillippe to inform John in revenge for the lecture he had received upon chatting up the girl who had made his coffee, that despite a push-up bra and painted lips, Isabella was only half his age (even if they two were at roughly the same stage of emotional development.)

Smiling at this very prospect, Phillippe answered, “We were able to confirm enough of my suspicions to formulate a solution that works to the benefit of most parties.”

“Ayo, cheers then,” John laughed in return before inviting himself to a beer and offering to get Phillippe and his brother one as well. Having scooped Arthur and Louis up to act as reinforcement, he returned a few minutes later with a Heineken for himself, a bottle of burgundy for Phillippe and Richard, limo and cola for the kids and pitcher of water, “Which Constance would remind us that we ought all to be drinking more of if she were here.” It was the closest he had likely ever come to following medical advice.

“John,” Richard cleared his throat after his brother had taken a seat, “I’m extremely impressed by the enterprise you demonstrated this morning.”

“It’s nothing. Seriously, it is the simplest shit.”

Phillippe threw Richard a hard look. Did he truly know his brother so little? John Plantagenet was incapable of taking a compliment – not in the sense of demonstrating humility. No. He insulted the admirer’s intellect and demanded yet more flowering terms to follow.

Where he might have been happy to see the brothers making up, Phillippe found himself growing annoyed at the prospect that now they were all bound to spend half of the rest of their evening in this constellation which would surely leave him ample time to contemplate if this was not all a show on Richard’s part to bid for whatever timid affection Phillippe might find himself lulled into displaying.

Naturally, Richard immediately began to exaggerate his own act. “You sell yourself short,” he told his brother jovially. “In the past I admit, I’ve given the appearance that I do as well, but I want you to know – it has not been my intention and I’m willing to try a bit harder if, perhaps, you are as well. You know I’ve no mind for London and I would give it up if I but could, but alas with the political map looking as it does, I can’t afford not to have an office in the city, and I rather think you might be the man to oversee it upon graduation. Financial oversight – things like that. I’m thinking you are uniquely qualified for such a position despite your lack of experience, you are brilliant when it comes to running numbers, you have enough of a legal background to keep us out of trouble in that regard and you’ve enough social science credits to lend to the argument that you would make for a decent superior if given the chance.”

John looked at Phillippe for help. For his part, the Parisian could offer little more than a shrug and a wide-eyed admission that he had no idea what Richard was plotting. “I’m a big fan of blatant nepotism – for isn’t everyone? - but this feels a bit much,” John conceded with a modesty Phillippe had never otherwise known him capable of demonstrating.

“It is not just that you were able to hack into everything di Segni ever though to digitise,” Richard continued, “it is the fact that you were so ready to take a stand – however ill-advised – where I might have expected you to cower, where anyone else might and in some very real sense has. I want to help support you, brother. I don’t feel that you are a failed investment.”

“Aye, go on then,” John grinned. Oh God! Phillippe cursed. So here they were as ever. He reached for his wine glass and watched the deep red ebbs and swells circle with the conversation as he twisted it to let it breathe, thinking he might rather himself choke.

“Senior VP with full salary, benefits and use of my home in the capitol?” Richard suggested as though out-of-hand. Phillipe abruptly set his glass down without taking a sip.

“What the fuck!” John exclaimed with the same shock.

John was smarter than most people Phillippe knew or was ever likely to meet if intellect was something measured exclusively in credits or cumulative grade average, but he was an idiot otherwise. Perhaps, Phillippe began to consider, Richard was simply trying to get rid of John and the arguments he raised same as he himself had used the means suddenly at his disposal to accommodate Agnes without the mess of necessitating an honest conversation with anyone.

“Provided, of course, that you obtain a degree - any! – by then end of the semester,” Richard elaborated. “I would want you back in England before August for reasons I should think obvious.”

Phillippe felt his heart sink in the realisation that this had nothing to do with him or anything to have transpired over the course of the afternoon whatsoever. John looked at his nieces and nephews and nodded slowly.

“Let me show you something -” he started as he took out his mobile and clicked a few icons as he rose and waled a few places to where his brother was sat at Phillippe’s side.

“What is this?” Richard asked.

“My dissertation. Three of them, anyway. I’ve been writing and revising like mad for the past several weeks. So, here is my current course load and accumulated credits. If you permit me to stay on until May, I can graduate with two masters on top of three undergrads, a teaching certificate and a fully unnecessary small boating licence that I got though part of an elective credit – but one never knows when something like that will come in handy.”

“You are unbelievable,” Phillippe said.

“I do my best,” John winked.

“So, is that a ‘yes’?”

“No, it is a ‘present me with a signed offer and I’ll get back to you’ – of course it is a ‘yes’, Richard!” John smarted him.

“Does this mean we might all have to move to England?” Eleanor asked tepidly when the offer settled, clearly reading the situation for what no one wanted to admit it was. “My mum isn’t going to get better, is she?” she asked, hoping no doubt to be negated.

John again looked at Phillippe for assistance, almost pleadingly this time. “ _You have to be honest_ ,” Phillippe whispered as quietly as he could, “ _they are old enough now to resent you otherwise._ ”

“We don’t know that,” John answered as he moved to knee down in between his nieces, “but what we _do_ know is that we are going to do everything we can to help her out while she is ill, even if it means logging into lecture every day at an un-Christian hour to find out that once again – as predicted – our teachers can’t get their headsets to function after a year’s worth of practice. Am I right?”

“I guess,” Eleanor murmured, looking down and pushing her plate from her as to signal she had lost appetite and interest.

“If you can’t do teach,” Phillippe shrugged in a weak attempt to lighten the mood.

“ _Psst … Don’t give him any ideas_ ,” Richard whispered at a volume that was intended for everyone.

“Lads, I swear,” John answered theatrically, “neither of you are at all fair to me, ever. Full stop. Right on then, Eleanor. Everyone stop eating. Imma try to bring a boxed pizza to hospital and see if that works better than basic good will. Stop it, I’m serious -”

“Which is exactly why it is such a struggle to take you seriously,” Richard snubbed. It was hard to gauge the extent to which he was in on the charade.

“In all fairness,” Alys offered, “My mum _is_ the kind of person who would try to order takeaway from a hospital bed for a laugh.”

“That is why she has always been better company than these blokes,” John expanded. “Ayo – we’ve something in common, you and I – did you know she raised me, too, your mum? I’ve been told that when I was a babe, she was the only person I’d let pick up and hold me,” he claimed, gesturing with both arms the act of rocking a baby to sleep, “who could find it within herself to love little baby me -”

“That is at once true and a complete overstatement of sentiment,” Richard grinned. “When you were born, Mum had a cold and couldn’t nurse you being that she was on antibiotics, you reacted badly to every formula and as such, you were constantly screaming and throwing a fit, and then Stan told Geoffrey that since it seemed you were _actually_ the devil, we might try giving you goat milk – which, being demon-spawn, you took to instantly,” he told to a table full of suddenly snickering children. “Pleased with herself, when she came around, she would pick you up and bounce you about, and owing only to the fact that you share a sense of humour she didn’t cry or pitch a fit when you bit or pulled her hair the way babies do,” he mimicked, leaning over to pick at his brother, “she just did the same to you and you’d start laughing like the fuck you are. I don’t know. I wouldn’t call it ‘love’ exactly, but nothing has much changed.”

“True,” John gave.

“I think it is, love, I mean,” Isabella smiled, “Goat milk is actually _really_ good to give to babies. It sounds like your mother is _super_ sweet and _really_ smart,” she said, causing Phillippe to wonder why teenage girls uniformly stressed adjectives of which they used excessively and with extremely limited variation. ‘Hashtag’, he thought though he supposed she was being pleasant enough, ‘Basic Bitch’.

“Um,” Constance’s children looked at one another in response to this rather generous assessment.

“She is a medical doctor, so she is smart,” Louis trusted himself to voice on the group’s behalf to Phillippe’s surprise, “but she is not the spoon-full-of-sugar kind of doctor. She made my daddy cry once even though he isn’t scared of needles.”

“She has made us all cry at one point or another,” Richard consented. “I’m afraid to go home for Christmas without downing a litre of water shortly before arrival. And then sometimes she’s in the water closet with my sisters who would turn me away in my hour of need, telling me to use a bush for Mum’s roses look dismal,” he reflected in too much detail. “I feel your pain is what I mean.”

Phillippe snorted back a laugh watching Richard drop a bit of his façade and demonstrate that he could be as awkward as anyone else. He had the decency to blush at the sound, which diminished yet more of the confused animosity Phillippe bore him.

“We’re you paying attention?” John asked the girl who was by every indication simply trying to appeal to him. “Stan is one of the meanest people in the world, but she is mean in a way that once she has a go at you no one else ever can. Ever. Like if you can laugh at yourself – and you would, if she were here, the girl is hilarious – that is it, you can conquer the world. She’d roast you but fire hardens. Richard,” he shifted, “oh shit, do you remember when you came out? She really stepped up and gave you the reaction Dad wouldn’t.”

“Came out of what? Were you hiding?” Louis asked, confused by the expression.

“In a sense,” Richard asked, giving Phillippe a look, asking how best he might procced. “In English they say someone is ‘in the closet’ when there is something they are hesitant to announce, and they ‘come out’ when they have spoken their truth.”

“Oh, I have seen this movie!” Eleanor said excitedly.

“What movie?” Arthur asked.

“It is an American musical about this guy who has a one-night stand with a pastor’s wife but it turns out the pastor is gay and -”

“Your mother let you watch ‘Trapped in the Closet’ by R. Kelly?” Phillippe interrupted, shocked. He knew Constance approached parenthood with far less censor, but this was too much, easily as he could believe it.

“Uh-huh,” Alys answered for her sister. “She said she liked it better than ‘Hamilton’, and that we had to be more exposed to art and culture and this was laying the groundwork.”

“Like she actively put it on for you guys, sat down and watched it with you?” John clarified. “Oh, that is brilliant, that!”

“Can one still watch the series?” Richard squinted.

“I think as a rule one should always try and separate art from artist and the opera is a masterpiece,” John answered.

“That is debatable on every level,” Phillippe said.

“One we could end real fast though,” John dismissed. “Richard, text Mum and ask her how we should all feel about cancel culture being that all creative geniuses from all of time are into some really messed up shit. Are we just not allowed to enjoy art because of wider politics?”

“No, but we shouldn’t be financially supporting child sex offenders,” Phillippe shook his head in disbelief. “Even if it is just in YouTube add revenue.”

“You do it,” Richard bade his brother. “I don’t want to have this conversation with her.”

“You _have_ to – if I do, she’ll expect that I’ve done something foul,” John complained.

“I think that is your answer, John,” Phillippe injected.

“Well, if I do,” Richard argued, “she will drag me into another five-hour discussion about the difference between art designed to move the soul and art aimed at confronting the mind and I’ve simply no energy for it at the moment.”

“I wish Mum had these types of candid discussions with me,” John claimed with a put-on pout.

“No, you don’t,” Richard insisted. “It is like what talking about realpolitik with Dad was like when he would start up at like five o’clock in the morning when your only active thought involved wanting coffee and toast. Mum is only interested in being interesting when I frankly couldn’t give a damn – and I just don’t have the time to spend a week feeling badly over it, you know?”

“I think that is everyone’s parents, though,” Isabella said.

“Probably,” Phillippe agreed.

“But ours were worse,” John said.

Richard nodded. “Yeah, anyway, back on the topic of our dear sister-in-law being the best kind of degrading – when I was a teenager,” he addressed his nieces and nephew, “I went through this whole completely stereotypical rebellious stage I imagined unique to my person, your grandmother did _everything_ she possibly could to encourage it and your grandfather ignored it _completely_ – which infuriated me because it took next to nothing to set him off and try as I might I just could not raise any kind of reaction from him. So,” he smiled, “I decided to come clean on a secret I’d been carry around with me for a while when we were planning to host a particularly conservative colleague of his around for supper so he would have to say something – I did not really care _what_ , I just wanted confrontation.

“Most of my siblings already knew and your dad, socially adept as he was, kept warning me not to, that it would not play out in any of the dramatic ways I’d envisioned, and he was right; my father just kind of listened patiently, made a joke to his colleague and my mum about having kids, jested to me that I could count myself fortunate that I’d never be in a position to sympathise and laugh along with the joke and then just shifted and asked me how my music classes were going and if I wouldn’t mind playing something for everyone after dessert. I asked if he had simply not heard me – to which he said he had, he was fine with it and he was glad that I was, too, but that he refused to let me make this one aspect of myself my entire person or let it define or limit the scope of my interests.

“Anyway, he was right on all counts, I see that now, but I probably would have flown through the roof if your mother hadn’t asked if we mightn’t dwell on this for a few minutes at least and then just dug in and made everyone have a proper chuckle about something they were otherwise more or less trying to be politically correct about. I was grateful, actually, even at the time and calmed down a bit afterwards because at a few points of her twisting me as though she meant to roast me on a spit, my dad had to break in and explain to your Aunt Johanna and Uncle John what was up not that they grow to be the kinds of people your mum was doing a convincing parody of – and it was the first time in what had been a while that I really felt that he saw me or cared about me at all. Of course,” he conceded with a glance to John, “the fallout of all of this was awful, my parents wound up deciding to move back in together which was more than any of us kids had really bargained for, but other than that, I can safely say from personal experience meanness is tactful and designed towards a specific end. It is an artform when I think on it.”

“You should say as much the next time you talk to Gran,” Alys told him.

“Just might,” Richard winked at her.

“Uncle Richard, since you know so much about what my Mum was like as a kid, do you remember how she and my dad met even?” Arthur asked. “She says she doesn’t remember, and Uncle John can’t because he wasn’t born yet -”

“They met at school when they were like your age. She _does_ remember, it just makes her sad so you shouldn’t ask,” Eleanor hissed at him.

“I’m not asking _her_ though.”

“Uh, yeah – yeah, he um,” Richard flustered, “it is kind of funny without really being funny. Your mum grew up speaking Breton at home, had only very limited French and no English whatsoever and as such was kind of ostracised at the bilingual kindergarten she’d been enrolled in – perhaps due to some kind of misunderstanding between adults as to what qualifies language education – but that is getting to much into politics and being that all three of you say ‘ _kalon digor_ ’ as opposed to ‘ _bon appetite_ ’ I’m guessing you are already more versed in such matters than I. Anyway, Geoffrey had a very loose familiarity with Celtic languages to that time but a very set understanding because of the books your grandfather read to us at home that this was the culture fairies came from, so he just assumed that your mother was a fairy princess.”

“You are making that up!” Arthur and Alys laughed. Eleanor nodded, blushing as though she had heard the story before. Louis squinted as he stared at his friends as though he imagined with enough concentration, he might find them to be hiding wings and observing him conduct this investigation, John elected to follow suit. Isabella giggled at the gameplay and Phillippe found himself smiling with and for Richard. It was, after all, exactly what he claimed to have wanted, being included as a member of his own family absent of the envies that he felt had long separated him from involvement.

“I swear I’m not,” Richard told them. “Your dad never really got over it either. When he got over his shyness around your mum enough to tell her that he wanted them to be friends, she ended up hugging him in her excitement at having one and later that day he won some kind of footrace against his classmates and was convinced this owed itself to magic being as he’d never beaten me or Henry or Mathilda at such games. Mum – your grandmother, I mean – teased him at dinner that evening that he had a crush and Geoffrey consented without argument that he would probably marry Constance someday if he learned the words to ask politely, which,” he shifted, again losing form, “was a weird way of putting it, but your grandmother was big into getting us all to be mindful of our manners – John,” he jested, “you’d have no memory of this, by the time you came around she’d lost all energy and interest – but yeah, that is how they met, your parents.”

“I think your dad must have asked your mum fairly early on into their courtship how to say, ‘will you marry me?’ in Breton, too,” Phillippe took up the narrative, “because when he and I became friends years later when we were both teenagers, I found him studying a children’s workbook trying to figure out something he had spelt out phonetically for himself when he was only just learning his letters. He must have figured it out though because asked her officially as soon as he reached the age of consent and they went off the following weekend to her hometown where they often took holiday anyway to elope with each other.”

“That is so romantic,” Isabella gushed with a wink at the children. “it does really sound like they both had a bit of magic about them.”

“Yeah, they were both Slytherins though, let’s not try to oversell it,” John injected. “But like seriously, the moral you kids should take from the story is that no matter what else is happening around you – and your mum and dad really went through a lot when they were growing up – you can always go home again, like your parents did when they secretly married in Nantes. Nantes,” he squinted, “Nanu…”

“Naoned,”Arthur translated. Louis and John both tried to repeat what had been said which caused Alys to chuckle to herself and Eleanor to ask why John could not just find a job there or in Paris with all of his credentials, where they had homes that they already knew.

“Because my brother asked for my help, like your mother asked for my help, and you always have a home with people who love you, even if it seems far away and even if sometimes the people looking out for your best interests are not always all that easy to love back. So, we’ll make a go of it, yeah? If we must?”

“Lame,” Atty giggled and stuck out his tongue.

John leaned across the table and roughly tussled his hair. “I’ll rip it out next time, don’t try me boy.”

Eleanor seemed to truly consider the sentiment being expressed before picking the words to respond to it. “Aunt Johanna told me that sometimes you meet people who make you want to make the world a little bit better for no other reason than that you know that they are in it, and that is what love is. That is all love is. You have no choice in the matter. I guess … if you love us enough to get a job and stuff, we and try a little harder to make you and Mum and everyone proud of us, too.”

“Your mother is always proud of you kids,” Phillippe injected, unsure if he agreed with his friend’s conclusions about the nature of the most beautiful thing the world had to offer being quite so commonplace. “We all are.” Eleanor smiled at him. “It will be okay,” he told her, “even if worse comes to worse. I promise. If it is not, I’ll beat your uncle up. He’s taller than me so he hasn’t quite yet figured out that I’m stronger, but we will keep that between ourselves for now,” he winked.

“ _You’re perfect_ ,” Richard whispered. Phillippe took a sip of the wine he had otherwise been ignoring, confident his cheeks had just grown equally red. Why would Richard not drop it? Were they not already faced with problems enough?

“That is how I feel about most people, I love them – I think,” Louis said to Arthur after thinking awfully hard on the matter, “except my maths teacher who gives too much homework and that lady who always comes on the news and says the parks are closed and no one is allowed outside. I don’t love them even a little, and I don’t think anyone does.”

“My teacher does, too, and I _hate_ her!” Arthur commiserated.

“Fucking same,” Isabella commented under her breath.

“Oh, I don’t know, I quite like maths myself,” John said.

“We established, though - earlier with the whole goat milk thing - that you are actually the devil, so such comes at little surprise,” Richard teased.

“But they love you and want to protect you and make things better for you later on,” Phillippe told the children with all of the enthusiasm he could muster after nearly two semesters of home schooling his son whilst simultaneously working. “You might not think so _yet_ , but you will probably love them when you are older. Like … John does. How many of your degrees involve letters pretending to be numbers?”

“Do you love anyone?” Louis asked before John had quite finished counting, again to his surprise. “Besides me, I mean?” How quickly they grew up. Was the environment in which he was raising his son more toxic than he realised? Did he supress his emotions quite that much?

“By that wide definition of Johanna’s,” Phillippe answered vaguely but jovially as he could manage, “I’m struggling to name a single person I hate.”

“How is that?” Richard asked him.

“Well,” Phillipe found himself forced to consider aloud, “my resentment of di Segni’s short term goals has led me to approach the Chunnel project as an act of public good,” he began to list, “I’m not all that keen on the Ayyubid or the mess of acronyms in which they trade, but having met Adil, I’ve read up a bit on anarcho-democratic confederacy or whatever it is the Kurds and their multi-ethnic allies are firing old Kalashnikovs in defence of and it has made me at least _aware_ of my casual misogyny to an extent that I want to change my behaviour to make the lives of the women in mine even just a teeny bit better. And you,” he swallowed, “my greatest enemy of all …”

“What?” Richard encouraged.

Phillippe took a deep breath. Was he really going to do this? Did he even have a choice if he hoped to set a positive example for his child?

“Getting to know you,” he answered Richard slowly, “I don’t know the extent to which this could be said to be a wider, societal improvement and maybe it can’t, but I’m not the sort of guy who would find it easy to scream from my rooftop about the world being a beautiful place, but you make me _want_ to be that guy, at least, you make me feel better about sentiment that I apparently have no control over.”


	12. Death and Taxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the most 08/15 fic … and not even in that fun way of Mary-Sue self-certs and/or wholesome, clumsy romantic misunderstandings between generally decent people. It is just dull.
> 
> But now there is more of it, so that is whatever, I guess. Enjoy?

Phillippe Capet felt his eyes follow the same sentence for the seventh time in ever increasingly slow succession, again without absorbing a single word. Frustrated, he reached for his mobile on his desk, eager to retreat to the sole intellectual stimulus he had been afforded in recent weeks –

Recalling the content of Richard’s last message, however, Phillippe immediately lost his nerve and instead elected to again indulge in online commerce as an ersatz.

He looked over his shoulder out of nervous habit, noting that no one in the office he now occupied had a care for what precisely he decided to do whilst on the clock, and if they bothered to take notice, he reasoned it would likely be to their pleasure to find his preoccupation with efficiency waning. Embittered by this sudden notion, Phillippe tried fruitlessly to make narrative sense of the series of decisions that found him at the local Civil Registry Office, of the lies that became truths by virtue of breath, of the injustice that defined his new routines that he had not quite yet been able to internalise. It was all such bullocks, but Phillippe Capet was content, at least by comparison to a standard he had long held under inarguably better circumstances.

Three days a week, he set his alarm earlier by an hour and a half, got Louis dressed (with all of the recent trials and tribulations that now contained) and rode his bike with his little boy with braids and bows struggling not to fall asleep in the attached child’s seat behind him to his mother’s house, where Phillippe was then forced to again endure the same conversations around how inconvenienced the poor, suffering woman felt in varying order. If his mother had managed to finish her first cup of coffee before he rang her doorbell, she instantly started in with her present workload for COVID 19 (she seemingly never tired of citing) was causing a significant uptick in divorce proceedings. Phillippe usually returned that this was good for her business as he gave her a peck on the cheek in greeting in want of basic pleasantries, to which his mother would retort that it might have been were she not confined to home office (by which she mostly meant were she not being asked to babysit – not that Phillippe could much imagine Louis being any trouble whatsoever or that his mother could ever cite an incident of the little boy proving himself a disruption.)

Sometimes she complained that Ysabeau’s parents did not assume the same responsibility for Louis (that they lived far away was evidently of no factor); sometimes that Phillippe no longer had the luxury (which she herself admittedly detested) of working exclusively from his couch; sometimes that he had accepted a pay cut with the transfer and could presumably no longer afford to hire an au pair which she thought would be in the child’s better interest; sometimes that he spent so much of what he was decidedly not making on what she accused of being small luxuries to indulge his son’s sins; sometimes she bemoaned that he was still single so long after the requisite period of mourning; sometimes she would chastise him for not having gone into law after his studies -

\- and sometimes she would even present him with a job offer, mockingly citing his new government function as a qualification (of sorts) for that which was gently referred to as “family law.”

They had these conversations when Phillippe picked Louis up in the evenings as well, not that he personally ever much participated or saw any benefit in attempting to do so. It seemed the price of free childcare in a stagnant economy and insofar as his mother was able to contain her criticisms when it came to her interactions with Louis, Phillippe would gladly pay it.

Despite all of his reservations (and despite the mild aggravations attached in the form of his mother’s seemingly continuous lecture) he was beginning to find he quite liked being at the office – or rather, _an_ office – again. Civil Registration would not have been his first choice – in fact it would not even have been his eleventh or twelfth – but Phillippe liked having something to resemble a routine within all of the chaos of pandemic and political machination that had somehow found him here.

By the time Phillippe arrived each morning (20 minutes prior to opening) the line usually circled the block – a reality he found that mostly owed itself to the fact that the waiting area was on lockdown rather than the general increase of demand for the services he was now required to provide on behalf of the state. The work itself proved mindless and medial. He would be handed a CNI, place it into the card reader as he quickly reviewed the necessary documentation, print out a receipt and explain that one could only pay using the automat that was located down the hall when they reached for their wallets.

On average this took ten minutes, in which time he would print out the requisite certificate, collect any number of superfluous items he was shocked to discover his taxes paid for to help others mark a milestone in their lives, and upon their return he would hand over as much, express his ‘heartfelt’ congratulations or condolences accordingly before offering a few words which he considered to be of genuine value –

 _‘_ _Due to EU data protection regulations, I’m unable to inform the tax office of your change in status. In order to do so, you’ll need to bring this to the adjacent building along with your most recent utilities bill to prove place of residence.’_

Most people in hearing as much were quick to the sort of anger that accompanied any minor inconvenience and cursed Phillippe accordingly. His new co-workers cautioned him that where they were sure he meant well, he risked creating something of a budgetary deficit; the bureaucratic apparatus was, after all, funded in part through fines born of its representatives’ collective, conscious inefficiency. But Phillippe paid this no mind. He had come to recognise in his own loss that indications of any kind that confessed the world for what it had ever been to be a greater comfort than continued prayer. That, and he liked knowing that for a few minutes, at least, there was at least one other individual as pissed off at the EU as he himself was clocking in and out of this place each day.

The choice phrase in time helped him confront his own fears and doubts to the extent that speculation was negated. Phillippe no longer tallied his sins - realised or merely desired – against a scale without measure, for he knew life eternal was run on SAP and required little more of St Peter than completing a series of three drag and drop menus and occasionally replacing an ink cartridge. Phillippe also knew that his living descendants would be required to separately report his passing to the tax office, and in all of this – he knew that life, for all of its impossibilities, eventually went on.

Eternally.

Maybe.

In some fashion, at least. And fashion, of late, was playing a greater role in the way Phillippe found himself navigating the world he had been left than he ever might have imagined.

The night after his daring attempt to recover relevant files from his former boss’ account, after dinner had dragged on into the viewing of a family film with John and the children and Richard had said goodbye with a quick kiss on the cheek, (wanting to give Isabella a ride home before his younger - but not young enough - brother had the notion to escort her), Phillippe had jested Louis as he removed the braid one of the girls had put in his hair that it was high time that they tried cutting it at home. Louis nodded his resignation but had his hair in pigtails the next morning and said as he sat down to breakfast that if it was all the same, he would rather leave it long. A day or two later he asked if he could have a dress and by the end of the week, he was refusing to get dressed period unless he was allowed to wear something ‘pretty.’

Though a verse of Deuteronomy found itself on the tip of his tongue, Phillippe, remembering that the last time Louis - who was otherwise so well-behaved – had worked himself up quite this much he had suffered an asthma attack, gave in. The boy was going through a growth-spurt as it was, and he assumed it was quite likely that he would grow out of whatever fancy had taken him just as quickly.

But Louis proved ecstatic with what he received by way of wardrobe to the point that Phillippe immediately noticed a change in the way his son met his challenges. He was more active and attentive in class, he trusted himself to answer more questions and to interact with his classmates and other friends in private Zooms afterwards – and to Phillippe’s absolute bafflement the children seemed to accept Louis without any digression into the small abuses people that age (and any) tended to otherwise direct at oddities. Perhaps, Phillippe considered, this owed to the fact that Louis was a genuinely pretty child, and when at last he addressed this with his boy, he found he was not all too off in his assessment.

‘ _You know that I love you not matter what,_ ’ Phillippe had begun as thought he had any realistic ground to assume that he was about to be having a conversation over preferred pronouns with a six-year-old, ‘ _but I am a little out of me element here. Louis, do you consider yourself to be a girl? Would you be more comfortable if I called you by a girl’s name?_ ’

‘ _No, but I think, it is just easier to be a boy when I get to wear a skirt,_ ’ Louis had answered, a bit confused as though he assumed this all to be fairly straight-forward. ‘ _Before, everyone was really mean to me – you especially, Daddy! You never let me play at all,_ ’ he accused, ‘ _because I’m short and I can’t run that fast or that far. But then when Eleanor and Alys were here they said, ‘girls can do anything!’ and I think they are right, they can do anything they want to, because no one cares if they are big and strong or not. So, I asked Miss Isabella if she could braid my hair, too, and she said I looked pretty when she was finished, and so did everyone else, and now that is what everyone at school says and it is nice. It is nice that people want to talk to me, and even you are nicer and let me do more things._ ’

‘ _That simply isn’t true,_ ’ Phillippe had answered, baffled at the explanation. ‘ _Louis, you know I am only ever trying to protect you-_ ’

‘ _It is! You always said ‘no’ because I might get sick, and you got everyone to act like I already am. But now I can just be a kid like everyone else. When I look pretty, everyone forgets that I have asthma. It doesn’t bother me having to say that I am a boy, but no one but you asks because that is just silly. No one would think that. Girls don’t like playing with dinos_ ,’ Louis – who in fact looked every bit a particularly lovely young lady - assessed, ‘ _they only like horses. It is so lame._ ’

‘ _I see_ ,’ Phillippe nodded, seeing only that his son did not have a developed enough concept of gender to have real issues around his own yet. Awkward and sacrilegious as it all felt for him, he would simply have to cope as long as Louis needed this coping mechanism and do his best to expose him to more positivity than he had personally been able to express of late.

He asked Louis one night after taking a call from Richard that found him with a smile how he would feel if his new friend came over more often once lockdown was over. Louis asked if Richard were going to be his stepdad because (even though he thought it would be nice to have one) Arthur had told him that his Uncle Richard did not really like kids and Louis was worried about the baby he supposed them to be having. ‘ _What baby?_ ’ Phillippe had made the mistake of asking. Louis answered by putting his hands on his stomach (which was more prominent when Phillippe was sitting) and answering that the stork probably did not know Mum was dead and so it had to scratch him by mistake when it had come. ‘ _It sometimes happens,_ ’ Louis informed him as though he considered himself an expert in these things, ‘ _Yves from my class has two dads and no mum, and my arts and crafts teacher, her wife is pregnant even though Father Bernard told us when he found out that only a man and a woman can have a family, but we asked and he did not know about the stork, so my class had to correct him there._ ’

Phillippe felt a mild sense of indignation that the Catholic school costing him thousands in tuition had at once normalised homosexual relationships by admitting students from such families and hiring educations of like persuasion, had also called him at work and forced him to take a twenty-minute unpaid pause to chastise him as a parent for allowing his son to present as female (which Phillippe was of the mind was far healthier than letting his son be ashamed of his delicate frame and features. To that end, did anyone cause a fuss when girls wore shorts or trousers or T-shirts expressing an affinity with a particular video game or sport franchise? If not, he had cause to sue on the grounds of gender discrimination and this threat quieted any additional complaints about his son’s ‘unseemly conduct.’) He took a deep breath and made the mistake of looking down as he did. His boy was right. He was noticeably rounder in the middle – something he could no longer blame on the pandemic now that he had a ‘system relevant’ job the required him to again bike to a workplace to fulfil. But then there was the bigger issue to which his son lightly alluded -

‘ _Richard and I aren’t …_ ,’ Phillippe began, stopping when he remembered that he was trying not to be so closed off emotionally as he was worried it was hindering the boy’s development. But then maybe it had been a mistake to address the filtration at all. The only reason, Phillippe considered himself to be engaging in such was that France was in lockdown. He could not see Richard at present even if he wanted to (which he did not) and by all measures should not even be speaking to him being that they were both entangled in a case currently in litigation. His hope was that he would be able to get rid of all romantic notions he harboured around his sex without ever having to engage them physically, that by the time this was all over he would be emotionally equipped to either entertain a new partnership with a suitable woman, or – more likely – again resign himself that romantic love simply was not for everyone and other sexless men he came across on the internet might have a point in saying that he did not have the right jaw structure to prove himself attractive to the types of women he might be able to get it up for were it not for his friends’ gorgeous, intelligent, interesting older brother who mistook him as having similarly alluring characteristics. Fuck.

 _‘I’m not pregnant, Louis. I just gained a bit of weight._ ’

‘ _I mean … it is okay if Richard and you are in love. You are happy when you talk to him and you never used to smile. Do you think he will at least like me though?_ ’ Louis pouted. Phillippe pulled him into a hug, wondering if he truly smiled so little in front of his son who despite all of his wild, youthful notions never failed to make him so happy and so proud.

‘ _My kid thinks I’m fat_ ,’ he had told Richard a few days later when the latter had surprised him during a set of crunches on his living room floor and asked why he was so red in the face. _‘Actually, he thinks I’m pregnant with your child, and so I am trying to get back into a workout routine which I’ve never actually had just feels a lot easier than explaining reproductive sex to a little boy in a frilly dress whose concept of gender distinction is reduced to plastic-toy preference._ ’

 _‘You have a very … Parisian physique. Look in general_ ,’ Richard teased. ‘ _You are suited by it; I would not worry too much._ ’

‘ _We can’t all be golden gods like yourself, Richard,_ ’ Phillippe rolled his eyes. But damn if he would not be found trying! He had managed to lose two kilos since he started biking again and by the time that he and Richard saw each other at court in passing, he felt certain the change would be enough to warrant comment, true compliment even.

‘ _I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,_ ’ Richard complained. ‘ _It is exaggeratory. You sound like my mother and as such when you offer me such honied words all I can’t help but recall the muttered laughter of my siblings who likely regardless of source still can’t quite contain their envies whenever I’m the subject of praise._ ’

‘ _Knowing them as I do, you are probably right,’_ Phillippe consented _, ‘I just hope that you are not off thinking about your mum in general or how Johanna kind of does that pig-snort-thing when she is trying not to laugh when you are hooking up with whatever gorgeous stranger at a club or construction site or wherever it is you ordinarily go to hunt._ ’

‘ _I don’t … first I don’t have anywhere near the experience you seem to imply, and second my mother is kind of the reason for the half of it though not for the reasons you’d be quick to accuse. She is kind of an icon in fashion and therefore in the queer community_ ,’ Richard explained uncomfortably. ‘ _They named a cocktail after her at this hangout I can no longer go to and its … I just can’t escape it._ ’

‘ _My relationship with my mother is basically her berating me for not having become a solicitor, so I can’t relate but I am kind of jealous._ ’

‘ _Well, my relationship with everyone is somehow coloured by whatever familiarity they with Freudian psychology. I was in the middle east once and had an important meeting cancelled last minute because evidently Saladin’s favourite paramour -the one who mothered most of his children - showed that photo spread my mother was ill-advised to have shot in her youth which somehow got published in a Turkish magazine that the emir evidently still has an old copy of somewhere to his long suffering wife who then tried to re-enact it, and it was a situation where the one did not want construction to start under certain conditions because of a Sunni-Shia thing that caused some great offence within the family and I wish I knew nothing of this becoming a plot point in factional or, ever, especially bedroom politics,_ ’ Richard shuttered. ‘ _Unrelated, did you know ‘I spent the night with Eleanor’ is Kurdish slang for masturbation?_ ’

‘ _I’m sure he did more than that though if we are thinking of the same spread,_ ’ Phillippe laughed. ‘ _You ever think of riding a horse nude save for a few expensive rocks?_ ’

‘ _Go fuck yourself_ ,’ Richard stuck out his tongue.

‘ _Sure, but only because you seem so psychologically object to doing so_ ,’ Phillippe winked. ‘ _Do know that I am not at all thinking about your mum or how much amusement your bratty little brother and sisters would find in the sentiment when I tell you that I think you attractive._ ’

Although, it occurred to Phillippe as soon as he had said it that they were probably all ripe with laugh over the affair from the limited interactions he still enjoyed with some of them.

Weeks after testing negative, Constance remained hospitalised whilst undergoing rehabilitation for the virus’ aftereffects – fatigue and rapid onset muscle weakness due to damages wrought by her recovering immune system on her peripheral nervous system – ‘ _chronic, highly inconvenient, but far from fatal in itself_ ’, or so she reported. She could evidently still manage a touch screen well enough to send him regular updates (most of which were pictures of her meals and the orderlies bringing them, accompanied with captions like ‘ _I’m eating out for the 4 th time this week. Know you’re jealous. XOXO_’ or ‘ _This is the only place in Paris where I can legit see the city through the lens of an American filmmaker. Cable TV or Internet Porn, take your pick. ;)_ ’ – which she had really out to consider putting out for public consumption.) Occasionally, she would give him updates on mutual friends, often only by way of asking if the rumours she heard were true – which Phillippe humoured. For the most part. For what he was receiving in return.

Constance had written that morning (under a photograph of a piece of toast and a particularly small jar of jam he supposed she found cute) that Johanna had evidently been blocked by the Pontiff on Twitter, which might have proven a day’s worth of mild amusement if certain relationships had not grown so strained. Phillippe was horrified by the news when he woke up to it, not because he was particularly concerned for his former friend’s mortal soul (Johanna would, regardless, one day be issued a death certificate by a civil servant who might then, per Phillippe’s own example, explain that the tax office needed separate notification.) He did not concern himself with her ability to partake in the sacrament of communion (which to his better knowledge she had engaged in all of once at her confirmation, which she had only participated in for the very secular reason of getting to be even more dressed up than her mother or sisters were regularly) or of the wider church community (Johanna, after all, was the only person in Paris whose ‘ _contribution to Notre Dame_ ’ had nothing to do with the cathedral, rather, hers was rather an attempt to get her worthless nephew Otto into a prestigious university for a sport he did not play which itself had ultimately failed when that market burst shortly after she had engaged it.) Phillippe did not even really think that the church as an institution had an grounds to act against her on an offence he had himself engineered if they were suddenly willing to welcome homosexuals to worship, of if Catholics were not immediately excommunicated for wedding Protestants (whom to his mind were worse than Muslims and Jews both) – no, the reason he found himself distressed owed itself to something Johanna had said in passing when last they had both met face to masked face –

‘ _That one Catholic_.’

Lotario dei Conti di Segni was by most measures more religiously devout than the Holy See and it stood, therefore, that one could assume reasonably or otherwise that he had the Pope’s ear, at least on matters of state. Phillippe was dying for Constance to follow this announcement with a prying question something that would confirm his plan was finally in motion, but no such inquisition came, and Phillippe could not ask himself without revealing his hand.

He had hoped to hear some wild story about di Segni’s ward succeeding in bringing his guardian to the negotiation table on a shaky premise, to hear that this was as far as his former boss was able to execute his rage – convincing a (real) authority on doctrine to low-key cancel an apathetic agnostic.

If nothing else, so much would provide Phillippe a sort of permission to call Johanna once more. If this had happened in the precise way phantasy foresaw, she could not still despise him, could she?

After he and Richard had decided on their plan of action, Phillippe had rung Johanna, hoping she would be willing to see to the logistics. He had wanted her and Adil to talk about regional trade agreements that could yet prove to Europe’s benefit however much these otherwise ignored culture and political geography - such was the manner in which westerners had always done business in the east - but Johanna would hear nothing of it, accusing him of some great evil in his willingness to let a child prove part of a solution.

Phillippe had countered that men like Adil had children for no other reason than to extend their political influence. This accusation perked the man's interest enough that he sat down in front of the computer screen to coldly but calmly address Phillippe in the hypothetical –

_‘Since understanding the actual world outside of your city walls captures little of your interest or empathy, I want you to imagine a comparable situation in which most of the major players bear a closer physical resemblance to yourself than I happen to. We’ll pretend for these purposes that China was economically positioned to colonise Europe a hundred or so years ago when the last remnants of empire were fading, and when they left to secure their continued business interests, they divided the land mass up in a fashion they found convenient. France no longer exists in any political form. The Germans, Spanish, English and Swiss who have absorbed your land and its people have forbidden your language and whenever they come into conflict with one another send soldiers of your ethnicity to the front lines to kill their brothers on the other side of the line. No one outside of Europe has much care for these conflicts however insofar as they supply of your natural resources are not being interrupted and insofar as Italy, which contains a religious minority, is not being herself attacked because for some reason the Americans have particular interest in propping her up because of atrocities committed in a mid-century fictive war inside Russia which they jot involved in shortly before its end._

_‘Now pretend that you are born into all of this at a time when you have a shot not merely of fighting back for your own people but also freeing your neighbours from despotism forced upon them by foreign powers and create something new, something egalitarian in ways that extend far past the political theory people in other countries assume that you are not familiar with because you pray differently, because you have different customs and because these ultimately irrelevant cultural differences have been reinforced by centuries of post colonialism under conditions as oppressive as when the Chinese were still here. Your children could live in a better world than you know or might ever realise giving your own trauma, and you want that for them in so much that you can’t suffer them your own misgivings, and one day, in the middle of a lifetime of fighting against the weight of history, your little boy comes to you and tells you that he made a friend in Beijing who shares his scholastic interests. The two grow close on this basis in short order absent of any regard to societal expectations you yourself have every conceivable reason to wish did not exist._

_‘When all of that all happens, Phillippe, when your land is taken and your people systematically massacred by a politic only in place because it suits foreign investments, when you’re denied the hand of the woman you love by virtue of proximity to the politics others would make of the union, when your children continually prove themselves capable of breaking this cycle simply through the virtue of being, then – and only then! - you can come talk to me about what kind of a father I am for not insisting that my son act against his nature and betray a close friend for someone else’s sense of job security. Someone who technically can’t be fired at that!’_

Phillippe had in fact not spoken to Adil since he had set conditions that could not possibly be met, nor had he spoken to Johanna, nor (could he assume) that Kamil had ever spoken to Frederick as had been his design. And he could not bring himself to tell Richard about any of it. He was not ready to lose him.

Not yet.

He still spoke to John from time to time, though Phillippe had reason enough to believe that this particular relationship also only existed to fodder conversations in which he was not taking part. He had himself made a few attempts in the weeks that had since passed to return to the balance that had previously existed, but John was of the mind to change to subject rather than cite his (marginally) valid excuse of being cross over the fact that he had been made to commit a crime in Phillippe’s interests. Otherwise, there friendship was now defined by the fact that John periodically complained that it had taken him so long to discover that one could succeed in politics and commerce with far less effort than was asked in academia, something which Phillippe (who enjoyed an upper-middle-class income through virtue of fill out drag-and-drop forms and occasionally walking to the office printer) could hardly pretend was profound even to strengthen a bond.

Especially when he was at said work.

>> _I had an idea about what you could do about the whole Eleanor situation_ ,<< Phillippe felt an impulse to write the eternal student upon making a few impulse purchases for his son’s closet and again finding that he could not bring himself to reply to or even open the missive he had originally taken the device out for the pleasure of reading once more. >> _Falafel._ <<

>> _You losing another banal argument with a warlord?_ << John replied instantly, probably smirking as he did.

>> _No, they had it today in the canteen and I recalled how gassy I was the first and last time I ventured that far east_ ,<< Phillippe answered, hoping that John would not only laugh at him but let him in on the larger joke.

>> _Not a fan of any narrative that references your bowels leads so I’m out. I’ll indulge my niece in her veganism until she either grows bored of it or gets it in her little head to get preachy, same as you are doing with Louis and his preference for girl’s clothes, I suppose,_ << John returned. >> _By the way, I’m trying to make packing up for England feel less like … well, *that*, so would it be too weird for you if I told the girls to go trough their wardrobes and find things that don’t fit them anymore to give to Louis?_ <<

>> _I guess not? That is actually rather considerate, but the kids are still coming with you? Stan is awake and in recovery_ ,<< Phillippe frowned.

>> _She is conscious for about five hours a day and can’t move much beyond her wicked tongue. We’ll see how physical therapy goes but right now neither of us are really planning on her being able to take care of the kids on her own. I mean hope for the best, plan for the worst, yea?_ <<

>> _Have you talked about it?_ << Phillippe wondered.

>> _Bloody can’t with that woman. She starts crying and then I start crying and then for some reason we end up speculating about The Masked Singer because it is just easier than remembering that a few months ago she’d entice a pillow fight every time we watched the telly and now she’s like getting bedsores from one and shit,_ << John answered.

>> _I guess_ ,<< Phillippe replied, feeling awful that he had even asked and even worse that he was so keen to have a laugh over Constance’s playful photos of hospital life without asking or offering much more on his end. He pressed return and was in the process of scrolling to find her name in his contacts when another message from John appeared.

>> _By the way, in an awful video chat with the rest of my family at the moment – you and Richard break up or something? He is in a worse mood than his standard._ <<

Phillippe swallowed. Oh, Richard! His sole stimulus of late, his damnation and his saving grace. He had been talking to the man for weeks, sometimes without end, sometimes with long pauses that felt a torturous eternity. Richard proved himself a far better writer than he was speaker, though perhaps it was simply easier to open up to someone without the thrones and temptations of physical proximity intervening. They spoke of everything open and forbidden, pressing and banal and the everyday experiences that fell somewhere in between.

Richard could be sweet and self-ironic. He could not take a compliment and asked in seeming earnest how Phillippe supposed anyone could find him attractive. By his own admission, his mother was his closest confidant and a constant stigma to any other relationships he might enjoy, his siblings alternated between envy and disinterest and he had no close friends to speak of as his interests were so defined and so divulgate from the norm. Phillippe found him fascinating however and loved reading Richard's poetry or hearing him play the lute, though he freely admitted his general ignorance of verse and song and Richard worried about sounding condescending with his explanations as he had been told (by his mother) was often the case, when really, he was just excited (perhaps too much so for most) to share any part of his inner world. He let Phillippe talk at length on politics, parenting, the fictive campaigns he was planning, and the small aspects of his city best appreciated from a bike seat on an oddly empty road. The two made plans of what they would do when the world was different in ways that resembled memory. Richard would take him camping and they would spend weeks riding through countrysides foreign to them both on the backs of horses though it had been a solid decade since either of them had sat in a saddle.

It was nice, insofar as Phillippe could pretend that this was nothing more than phantasy for both of them. But three days before Richard had indicated that he did not see their texts as a role-playing game of sorts, as something simply to pass the time until something better inevitably happened to warrant their individual action and attention -

>> _I would surrender anything I possess and everything I am to but once know the pleasure of your kiss. When can we meet? You said it yourself that it does not matter for the case if di Segni’s suspicions bear warrant. I’m in love with you and I want to hold you in my arms and feel the warmth of your breath on my skin._ <<

He had not responded to him since. He did not know how. They could not see each other until the trial, regardless of the legality it could leave an unwanted impression on the jury, one that might later prove difficult to distance himself from. Had tried to write him a poem and when he realised that he was rather bad at this, he tried to rest on the words of others but nothing he had found matched his sentiment for he did not know what he had to say for himself. He wanted Richard in the same way but only felt confident admitting as much under the notion that they two would never again meet until the impulse was wasted and the devil was spent.

>> _Why are you so willing to accept this narrative of your own invention? I’m not gay, John. You know that_ ,<< he wrote back with a sigh wishing everything to end. Perhaps he should write Richard back that his plan had failed, that Johanna and her intended now hated him for having tried and that he was coming around to the mindset that they had never had any right to – it had all been for naught before it was even a notion. Canute would carry on his complaint without consolation and di Segni would realise all of his darker designs by virtue of delays. There was no way they could threaten the commissioner outright without a confession that could damn John – who was otherwise innocent in all of this – to a lengthy prison sentence. Although, Phillippe considered, that perhaps would not be the worst outcome of these misadventures -

>> _Why? Because last time I saw you, you basically told him at a table full of impressionable young children that you wanted him to make you scream with pleasure_.<< John returned.

Phillippe frowned, feeling his face grow red at the very sentiment.

>> _Plus, it would totally make sense if you were gay,_ << John continued. >> _You have always been weird about and around women going back to when we were kids, you always found an excuse to ignore whomever you were in a relationship with by creating physical distance, and I mean, I seriously don’t care, but it is just hilarious that you think my brother is some kind of white knight when he like literally lives in our mother’s basement and anyway, the gossip around you two is proving entertainment enough that I haven’t had to tell Stan that her daughter has gone vegan – which is just annoying._ <<

Exactly as he had expected then. Oh well, at least he was doing something to lift his bedridden friend’s spirits. Even if that something was decidedly, designedly ingenuine.

>> _Is Richard really that tense?_ << Phillippe could not help but to ask.

>> _Is this family video conference more worth my while than I have otherwise been given to believe?_ << John returned the question with one of his own.

>> _I mean, he is giving you a job upon graduation so one would think. What is happening? Is this about Johanna being excommunicated via social media?_ << Phillippe replied in the same stagnation.

>> _Nah,_ << John at last answered, >> _it is just my mum trying to get us to commit for Christmas, my sisters being catty towards and about one another, Richard waxing poetic about who even knows and me trying to get out of this conversation because snore. You up to anything more interesting?_ <<

>> _I have to be at the office for another hour, so not really. I was hoping that you would be able to entertain me._ <<

>> _Well, try texting Richard and I’ll let you know what happens. That should prove worth to both our whiles_.<<

Phillippe thought about it. He thought that he most certainly did not want the devil’s brood to collectively suffer on his account, that he did not want Richard pinning for him and that he did not want to court the consequences of honesty in any form. He did not want to work in the Civil Registry Office. He did not want to have stubbled upon controversy or created his own in turn. He did not want to have to go to court. He did not want to be in a continuous fight with his friends and he certainly did not want to have such a dim view of his own social interactions that he thought nothing of trying to convince spoilt (to be sure) but otherwise innocent children to engage in a battle when they were yet ignorant of the inertia of their cultural divide. He did not want his own son to continue thinking him incapable of expressing happiness, love, or approval – for this was in no way how he felt. He did not want to continue fighting with his mother over the same choice topics when he knew in his heart that she was right – he should not be here. He should not be fighting for a job he had long ceased to find satisfying, especially when he had moral objections to again serve in such a capacity. Perhaps he really ought to consider taking up law as opposed to administering it. Perhaps he had ought to make connections at court to use as a means to elected office. Perhaps he ought to write the rules himself.

In all of the what-ifs and if-thens that scattered his thoughts, for all that he did not want, he wanted Richard Plantagenet and he wanted him desperately. He wanted, at last, for him to know as much.

>> _You make me feel whole in ways I thought belonged only to myth. Could I but touch you, I should doubt I could ever be convinced to let go_.<< Phillippe wrote.

He waited.

Nothing.

Not from Richard, not from John, not even from Constance in the form of a picture of that hospital orderly she fancied with an inappropriate caption like ‘ _At least I’m fingering myself right now. Quit sobbing that your erotic phantasy plays the same stupid games you do and go ignore church doctrine on self-pleasure. Ps – no worries if you want to use this image as inspiration. It doesn’t have to be weird between us. I understand._ ;)<<

Nothing.

Thirty-five minutes passed with Phillippe trying to distract himself on social media, curious how his former classmates were pretending to be living their best lives when they otherwise had nothing to do, when ten minutes to six, he could not help to shoot John a bitter response that ignored is real grievances entirely.

>> _See you’re still following that babysitter on the socials._ <<

Nearly two minutes passed absent of reaction. Then the checkmark indicating that the message had been received changed from grey to blue confessing it to have been read. Then nothing.

Nothing!

What was happening on this family FaceTime that john had lost any and all interest in upholding his part of their pact? Why had Richard not responded? The message had been received and read! What had he failed to convey? Would it have been better to have simply waited until he had gotten off work to call? Was Richard planning to ring him? Had he instead lost interest as Phillippe had always suspected he eventually would?

Finally, when Phillippe had logged out of the work-server and was in the process of trading his leather loafers for a pair of old sneakers he wore while in transit, his phone buzzed in his coat pocket with a reply. Just not the one he truly wanted or awaited.

>> _It is not what you think but it is in that direction_.<< John wrote. >> _I don’t really want to say more, but I’m not the predator here. Sometimes it is just useful to have an acquaintance versed in the myriad ways in which the internet circumvents normal human interaction_.<<

Pfft! A pox on the whole of their house!

>> _Are you writing a paper on the topic or just trying to figure out what filter to use?_ << Phillippe responded, not really interested in the answer.

>> _I’m trying to figure out what to do about a teenager with designs at hijacking the democratic process in an EU member state because his legal guardian hired a woman twice his age to seduce him, so yeah, I think it helps having a teenager who thinks herself alluring based on click bait on side for this one. My siblings are being of absolutely no help and you’ve always been useless when it comes to shit like this._ <<

>> _What the actual fuck, John?_ << Phillippe blinked several times as he reread the message, trying to decipher it.

>> _Yeah_ … _If you’ve got nothing better going on this evening, you might want to get over to my mum’s. I’m on my way myself. So is Isabella. My sister Eleanor is in her music room which is soundproof (Thank God!) so I paid one of my nieces fifty quid to lock her in there before she could order Alfonso to contact the Spanish Embassy in Hungary to get word to Orbán that he is about to be overthrown in a stupid coup started from the computer of the fourteen-year-old owner of fucking FC Palermo because if she did that, that would be a sure sentencing for all of us. Johanna is on her side (because of course she is), but all of her connections are like within the FA and scattered PKK shoot-offs so that is worthless. Eleanor might have a phone though. Didn’t quite think of that. Anyway, if that was not dystopian enough for you, my mum put Christmas decorations up this afternoon so … want to come join in a screaming match? No idea what Richard thought of your text. Things really escalated after I brought up that shit with Freddy and Lu-Lu._ <<

Confused and panicked, Phillippe did the Signs of the Cross and hit the icon of a phone to connect the call. “Again, what the fuck?” he demanded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I doubt there is any interest, but there exists on my computer an explanation of John’s low key dabblings in espionage from the perspective of his mum, which I can post if anyone wants to read it, just let me know. Also, normally I write 18th century stuff and hit the character limit talking about history (sometimes football, sometimes modern politics) in the notes section, but here I figure that anyone interested in reading multiple chapters about the guy commonly credited with inventing modern bureaucracy is familiar with medieval history and doesn’t exactly need a list of the places in the text where I’m pretending a creative analogy. Maybe I am wrong though. Or maybe you are just curious about how much of this is in fact just an extended complaint about the current President of the European Commission (most of it, to be honest) or are unfamiliar with the vaguely referenced ideological underpinnings of an eastern Anatolian paramilitary organisation. Anyway, if any of this bears true, pop into the comments and I’ll make an effort going forward to write proper notes. Cheers.


End file.
